On the grounds that New York University scholars violated its term of service by scraping user data without permission, Facebook banned their personal accounts. The scholars said Facebook was retaliating for their exposing problems in Facebook’s platform relating to ad transparency and misinformation. (The Verge, August 4, 2021, by James Vincent)
Gilad Edelman, Wired, August 4, 2021, writes that Facebook was upholding a Federal Trade Commission decree of 2019 to protect user privacy. Edelman argues that the consent decree does not relate to the scholars’ activities. Instead Facebook was trying to hide its practices regarding who gets shown what ads and why.