Meta to Replace Widely Used Data Tool—and Largely Cut Off Reporter Access
Meta’s new tool, the Meta Content Library, will be available only to academic and nonprofit researchers.
Wall Street Journal
Meta Platforms plans to shut down a data tool long used by academic researchers, journalists and others to monitor the spread of content on its Facebook and Instagram services, the company said last week.
The social-media giant said it will decommission CrowdTangle in five months and is replacing it with a tool called the Meta Content Library, which will be available only to academic and nonprofit researchers, not to most news outlets.
CrowdTangle has been widely used by journalists, researchers and regulators seeking to understand social-media platforms and studying the viral spread of content including false information and conspiracy theories. Reporting based on data that the tool produced often caused frustration for Meta’s leaders, who have been gradually limiting the tool in recent years.
Meta has already started taking applications for access to the new tool, which it said it is continuing to develop. The company said it will be an upgrade over CrowdTangle, with features the old tool lacked, such as the ability to search content based on how widely it was viewed and to see data on public comments on posts.
Two researchers granted early access to the new system offered a mixed appraisal.
Cody Buntain, a researcher at the University of Maryland’s College of Information Studies, agreed that the new features are valuable, but said the new system lacks CrowdTangle’s ability to study social-media activity in specific geographic locations.
Buntain also raised concern about the timing of CrowdTangle’s planned termination, set for Aug. 14. While the advance notice will give researchers time to finish existing projects, closing it in the final months of 2024 U.S. election campaigning will almost certainly disrupt research into political activity on Facebook and Instagram.
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