Hello,

In just 68 days, Meta plans to abandon its industry-leading transparency tool: CrowdTangle – right in the middle of the biggest election year on record.¹

CrowdTangle is used by researchers, journalists and human rights advocates to monitor hate speech and political disinformation on Facebook and Instagram. Its dashboards have allowed harmful trends and abuse to be quickly identified, monitored and analysed.

Meta plans to shut off all access to this critical transparency tool on August 14. The timing of this decision poses a direct threat to our collective ability to safeguard the integrity of this year’s elections.

That’s why Mozilla supporters are calling on Meta to urgently re-think their decision. And we’re not alone. Over 176 organisations, researchers and journalists signed our open letter in March, which attracted global media attention.² And just recently, the European Commission hit Meta with an investigation, explicitly naming the company's decision to ditch CrowdTangle and cut off access to real-time data used to monitor political disinformation during elections.³

The pressure is working already: Last week, in what is little more than a PR move, Meta released some last-minute EU Elections dashboards with not enough time for groups to make use of them.⁴If we add more pressure in this crucial moment, we can show Meta how important it is to keep CrowdTangle live until 2025 and protect election integrity worldwide. Will you join us?

Tell Meta to maintain CrowdTangle during this critical year for democracy and protect election integrity.

For years, CrowdTangle has been experts’ go-to tool for real-time platform transparency. It has become a lifeline for understanding how disinformation, hate speech and voter-suppression content have spread on Facebook and Instagram.⁵ It’s also been used by researchers and human rights groups to study how tech platforms influence war crimes, human rights violations, public health crises, and natural disasters.

Meta wants to replace CrowdTangle with a new tool called the Content Library – but currently, this tool doesn’t provide the transparency, insights and search capabilities offered by CrowdTangle and, most importantly, currently only a relatively small number of researchers have access to it.⁶

Meta’s new research tool might eventually become an effective replacement for CrowdTangle, but in this crucial election year it’s not yet fit for purpose as a tool to monitor elections. That is why, collectively, we’re calling on Meta to:

• Keep CrowdTangle functioning beyond August 14.
• Rapidly onboard all current CrowdTangle users that are focused on election integrity to their Content Library, including policymakers, NGOs, researchers and news outlets.
• Engage in regular consultations with the global CrowdTangle community to ensure that the Content Library becomes an effective tool for them.
• As soon as possible, both the Content Library and CrowdTangle should add data about any election-related labels that are attached to public content and accounts by Meta, especially around fact-checking and voter-interference.

What we need right now are effective tools to track content during critical democratic moments, and to protect people before, during, and immediately following elections. Together, we can push Meta to keep CrowdTangle running and ensure election integrity. Will you join the campaign?

Tell Meta to maintain CrowdTangle during this critical year for democracy and protect election integrity.

Thank you for all you do for the internet, and to protect elections around the world.

Claire Pershan
EU Advocacy Lead

Mozilla

More Information:

1. CrowdTangle: Important Update to CrowdTangle. Published March 2024.

2. Mozilla Foundation: Open Letter To Meta. 14 March 2024.

3. European Commission: Commission opens formal proceedings against Facebook and Instagram under the Digital Services Act. 30 April 2024.

4. Mozilla Foundation: Don’t be Fooled by Meta’s Transparency Display: Election Integrity Risks Remain. 4 June 2024.

5. Rappler: Why possible loss of CrowdTangle worries fact-checkers and disinformation researchers. 22 July 2022.

6. For more information about the differences between CrowdTangle and the current Content Library – Mozilla Foundation: Open Letter To Meta. 14 March 2024.