FTC Official Criticizes Facebook for Terminating Political Ads Probe

FTC Official Criticizes Facebook for Terminating Political Ads Probe
The logo for Facebook appears on screens at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York's Times Square, on March 29, 2018. Richard Drew/AP Photo
The Associated Press
Updated:

WASHINGTON—A senior Federal Trade Commission official is criticizing Facebook’s move to shut down the personal accounts of two academic researchers and terminate their probe into misinformation spread through political ads on the social network.

Facebook wrongly used a 2019 data-privacy settlement with the FTC to justify shutting down the New York University researchers’ accounts this week, Samuel Levine, acting director of the FTC’s consumer protection bureau, said in a letter Thursday to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.