While criticizing social media companies for invading user privacy, some university researchers and nonprofit organizations are pushing for access to the same data collected by those companies—arguing that such information is crucial to understanding how to combat domestic extremism.
Researchers and activists made their case for more access to social media data at an Oct. 28 Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing on social media and domestic extremism. Their calls follow the release of the Facebook Files—a trove of internal records that reportedly show, among other things, the company’s failure to control the spread of radicalizing content.
