Facebook is a newstand. But no one can see which news Facebook is pushing to the top.
So we built an app for that called #CitizenBrowser. Our first finding: the sharp impact of Facebook’s political ad ban reversal in the Georgia Senate elections.
https://t.co/GZNdwZOlHW /1
So one night, late at the WeWork, @suryamattu said to me: “We’ll have to build our own browser.” /4
Then we wouldn’t be monitoring users. We would only be monitoring their feed. /5

https://t.co/nExS6efQtc /7
More from Internet
We’ve spent the last ten months building #CitizenBrowser, a project that aims to peek inside the Black Box of social media algorithms, by building a nationwide panel to share data with us. Today, we are publishing our first story from the project. /1
.@corintxt crunched the numbers and found that after Facebook flipped the switch for political ads, partisan content elbowed out reputable news outlets in our panelists’ news feeds. https://t.co/Z0kibSBeQZ /2
You can learn more in our methodology, where we describe how we did this and what steps we took to ensure that we preserved the panelists' privacy. https://t.co/UYbTXAjy5i /3
Personally, this project is the culmination of years of experiments trying to figure out how to collect data from social media platforms in a way that can lead to meaningful reporting. I’ve described a couple of highlights below 👇 /4
My first attempt was in 2016 at Propublica, when I was working with @JuliaAngwin . We were interested in seeing if there was a difference in the Ad interests FB disclosed to users in their settings and the interests they showed to marketers. /5
.@corintxt crunched the numbers and found that after Facebook flipped the switch for political ads, partisan content elbowed out reputable news outlets in our panelists’ news feeds. https://t.co/Z0kibSBeQZ /2
You can learn more in our methodology, where we describe how we did this and what steps we took to ensure that we preserved the panelists' privacy. https://t.co/UYbTXAjy5i /3
Personally, this project is the culmination of years of experiments trying to figure out how to collect data from social media platforms in a way that can lead to meaningful reporting. I’ve described a couple of highlights below 👇 /4
My first attempt was in 2016 at Propublica, when I was working with @JuliaAngwin . We were interested in seeing if there was a difference in the Ad interests FB disclosed to users in their settings and the interests they showed to marketers. /5