facebook and Instagram parent company, Meta Platforms, has recently shut down CrowdTangle, a widely used tool for monitoring social media posts. This decision, which was announced earlier this year by Meta, has sparked protests from researchers and nonprofit organizations. In May, numerous groups including the Center for Democracy and Technology and Human Rights Watch sent a letter to Meta requesting that the tool remain operational until at least January to ensure its availability during the U.S. presidential elections.
The letter expressed concerns about the impact of this shutdown on oversight mechanisms before and after elections. It also criticized Meta’s transparency efforts during a critical period when trust in social media platforms is fragile. CrowdTangle has been instrumental in helping researchers sift through vast amounts of information on facebook to identify harmful content and threats.
In March, the Mozilla Foundation also sent a similar letter urging Meta to keep CrowdTangle functioning until January. The tool was highly regarded as an industry best practice for real-time platform transparency by providing insights into disinformation, hate speech, and voter suppression on facebook.
Meta has introduced an alternative called the Meta Content Library; however, access is currently limited to academic researchers and nonprofits rather than news organizations. Critics argue that it is not as useful as CrowdTangle—at least not yet.
Nick Clegg, President of Global Affairs at Meta Platforms, stated in a recent blog post that they have been gathering feedback from hundreds of researchers to improve user-friendliness and data accessibility within the Meta Content Library.
Meta defended its decision by stating that CrowdTangle does not provide a complete picture of what occurs on their platforms while asserting that their new tools offer more comprehensive insights. It is worth noting that Meta acquired CrowdTangle back in 2016.