Facebook blocks third-party tools that collect information on political ads
Facebook has moved to block third-party ad transparency tools used by nonprofits and news organizations, although the company claims its efforts are aimed at preventing malicious actors from scraping user data and not intended to punish critical reporting on its platform. The company has done so by inserting code that prevents the use of web plugins that automate the collection of information from the social network, according to ProPublica, which has been leading the investigative reporting around political ad buying and ad-based discrimination on Facebook for more than two years.
ProPublica operates a searchable database, called the Facebook Political Ad Collector, that displays information about more than 120,000 political ads thanks...