Spring & Summer '21

Although the project didn’t update these entries, the Spring + Summer 2021 was an awakening list of months behind the scenes. We are developing a more robust method of algorithm accountability, more platforms, partnerships, and concepts.

All the variety of Tracking Exposed is taking shape as long as the team grew, in parallel the public demand for our kind of services grows, as so are new actors in the field.

Spring 2021 — PAADC project successfully completed!

We participated in a fundamental fashion in the first investigation that attempted to answer, with a multidisciplinary approach never seen before, to the question “does political advertising has any impact? if yes, how much?”

With a partnership organized by the University of Amsterdam, Datactive, with Volksgrant and I&O, the researcher was composed of:

• A poll institute. They survey vote orientation to 2000+ Dutch electors.
• The same poll institute, picking them among the political spectrum, and offering to install a browser extension, a rebranded version of facebook.tracking.exposed, would collect and parse the public posts appearing on their newsfeed.
• We implemented a patch to the streamlined facebook.tracking.exposed; as explained in the privacy policy, the poll institute might link between the collected evidence and their answers to the poll; this was made by having the extension looking to a personal ID communicated via survey.
• A research team analyzing political advertising, advertising that has a political message but doesn’t come from official political pages, and content published by political actors that appears on the timelines of the 600+ dutch citizen who subscribes to it.
• The same researchers were interpolating with the Facebook political AD library, which should contain all political AD and represent one of Facebook’s most significant concessions after 2016 pressures.
• The journalist from the Volkskrant interviewing politicians about their investment in Facebook data.
• The poll institute surveyed the 600+ citizens, checked if they somehow changed their voting orientation, and asked about political messages seen on Facebook at the end of the electoral.
• Journalists are reviewing all the data above to actually draw a line of effectiveness on political advertising via Facebook.

PAADC has been one of the most comprehensive research ever made on the subject. A multidisciplinary approach that is discussed mainly in the Dutch language, the first article is from 22 Februady 2021, and the second from 12 of March 2021; In English, this articles on PolicyReview.info.

YouChoose.ai begun!

Check the website, and if you want to contribute with a 4 minutes user survey, we’re studying the application and doing UX testing.

Extra: if you want to explore the world of shadowban detection, feel free to reach out.

Two open letters co—signed

The team is growing!

and this simple-card-style need a large graphic upgrade :)