In recent years digital platforms have made independent scientific research into potentially consequential phenomena such as online disinformation, polarization, and echo chambers virtually impossible by restricting scholars’ access to the platforms’ application programming interfaces (APIs). The Social Science One [https://socialscience.one] initiative, specifically designed to provide scholars with access to privacy protected data, has made important progress over the last 18 months, but Facebook has still not provided academics with anything approaching adequate data access.
In particular, Social Science One’s work with Facebook has been continuously delayed; more than a year and a half into the venture and Facebook has yet to release the full set of URLs data it promised. Instead, scholars have received a ‘URL light data set’ that is extremely limited in scientific value. Some researchers have also been provided access to CrowdTangle, a platform for investigating posts from public pages, which was previously available primarily to journalists. This new access is appreciated. However, CrowdTangle also has significant limitations. What is more, the anticipated full URL dataset was intended to be just one of many datasets to come. Under the current circumstances, there is good reason to doubt whether other useful data will be forthcoming.
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