Sign up for our daily briefing
Make your busy days simpler with Axios AM/PM. Catch up on what's new and why it matters in just 5 minutes.
Catch up on the day's biggest business stories
Subscribe to Axios Closer for insights into the day’s business news and trends and why they matter
Stay on top of the latest market trends
Subscribe to Axios Markets for the latest market trends and economic insights. Sign up for free.
Sports news worthy of your time
Binge on the stats and stories that drive the sports world with Axios Sports. Sign up for free.
Tech news worthy of your time
Get our smart take on technology from the Valley and D.C. with Axios Login. Sign up for free.
Get the inside stories
Get an insider's guide to the new White House with Axios Sneak Peek. Sign up for free.
Catch up on coronavirus stories and special reports, curated by Mike Allen everyday
Catch up on coronavirus stories and special reports, curated by Mike Allen everyday
Want a daily digest of the top Denver news?
Get a daily digest of the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Denver
Want a daily digest of the top Des Moines news?
Get a daily digest of the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Des Moines
Want a daily digest of the top Twin Cities news?
Get a daily digest of the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Twin Cities
Want a daily digest of the top Tampa Bay news?
Get a daily digest of the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Tampa Bay
Want a daily digest of the top Charlotte news?
Get a daily digest of the most important stories affecting your hometown with Axios Charlotte
Sign up for Axios NW Arkansas
Stay up-to-date on the most important and interesting stories affecting NW Arkansas, authored by local reporters
Facebook on Monday said it’s giving outside researchers more information about how and why political ads get shown to certain users.
Why it matters: Researchers have long complained that Facebook has been slow to grant experts access to information about ways its platform is used.
Details: The tech giant says it will be providing new data to researchers on Feb. 1 about political, social and election ads that ran on its platform from Aug. 3 to Nov. 3 of 2020.
- It will be making the targeting criteria — "such as location and interests, selected by advertisers running social issue, electoral or political ads" — available for analysis and reporting.
- "We recognize that understanding the online political advertising landscape is key to protecting elections, and we know we can’t do it alone," wrote Sarah Clark Schiff, Facebook product manager.
- Facebook will also move its U.S. 2020 Election Spend Tracker data that's currently available in the Ad Library to the company's Elections page, where the information will remain available for download.
- The company says ads about social issues, elections or politics that run on Facebook and Instagram will continue to be archived and publicly available for seven years in both the Ad Library and Ad Library API.
- Researchers can apply for access via Facebook.
The big picture: Facebook has been slowly starting to open up its data to researchers studying things like misinformation.
- The company first said it would grant researchers access to its platform data in 2018. At the time, it promised to give a huge swath of data to Social Science One, an independent research commission comprised of third-party academics, to analyze in an effort to better understand Facebook's role in the democratic process.
- It finally gave that research to the consortium in 2020. The company said it took much longer than anticipated to get the researchers the data.
Go deeper: