On Thursday, 5th August 2021, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) of the United States have criticized the company ‘Facebook’ for making the misleading claims for the purpose of explaining why, the company had shut down the accounts of the researchers, who had been studying the political advertisements on the social media platform.
On Tuesday 3rd August 2021, Facebook said, it has closed the personal accounts and access of the researchers of the New York University due to the concerns about the privacy of the users on the platform, and the company had also said that, this decision had been made out of a need for the company for living up to a consent agreement with the US FTC.
Joe Osborne, a spokesman for Facebook said that, the consent decree had not been only reason for disabling the accounts of the advertisement researchers, instead the decree has been required the creation of the rules for program of the privacy of the users, which has been what, Joe Osborne said had been violated by the researchers, and Laura Edelson, who is one of the researchers have denied that they did anything wrong on the platform.
The US FTC has also posted a letter to Marc Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, which says that, it had been inaccurate that, the actions of Facebook had been required under the consent decree of 2019, and Sam Levine, acting director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection of FTC said, he appreciate that, Facebook has now corrected the record, and he is disappointed by how Facebook has conducted itself in the matter.
