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Facebook said on Tuesday it had cut off the personal accounts
and access of a group of New York University researchers, citing
concerns about other users' privacy.
Senators Amy Klobuchar, Mark Warner and Chris Coons pressed
Facebook in a letter to Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg to
answer a series of questions. These include how many researchers
or journalists have had their accounts disabled this year, why,
and how was Facebook changing its terms of service to better
accommodate research.
Facebook has said that the research violated rules to protect
the privacy of the social media company's users.
Facebook paid a record $5 billion fine in 2019 to resolve
allegations it had violated a Federal Trade Commission consent
order by misleading users about how much control they had over
their personal data.
Separately, the FTC sued Facebook in December for allegedly
violating antitrust law. That complaint was dismissed and the
agency has an Aug. 19 deadline to refile it.
In the letter, the lawmakers also asked how the NYU researchers'
work hurt people's privacy. They referenced a letter from Samuel
Levine, the FTC's acting director of consumer protection, which
said the NYU research did not violate a consent agreement
between the agency and Facebook.
"Does Facebook intend to restore the Ad Observatory researchers'
access?" the lawmakers asked, giving the company until Aug. 20
to reply.
(Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Richard Chang)
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