Meta said Monday it will share access to its internal data with researchers seeking to understand online mental health, a concession that comes days before CEO Mark Zuckerberg is set to testify before Congress on the effects the company’s apps have had on teenagers.
Facebook‘s parent company announced on Monday that it would start sharing “privacy-preserving social media data” with select academics, beginning with the Center for Open Science. The center is a nonprofit organization dedicated to transparency in academic research. Researchers have been attempting to get access to Meta’s internal data for years.
Zuckerberg will appear on Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee to address how Meta is handling sexual content and teenagers’ access to the content.
“At Meta, we want to do our part to contribute to the scientific community’s understanding of how different factors may or may not relate to people’s well-being. We’re committed to doing this in a way that respects the privacy of people who use our app,” Curtiss Cobb, Meta’s vice president of research, said in a press release.
Meta took steps toward expanding researchers’ access in November when it created the Meta Content Library, a collection of already-public data. The new data that the center receives will be more private but anonymized.
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Zuckerberg will appear alongside the CEOs of TikTok, Discord, Snap, and X before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday to address questions related to online safety for children and teenagers. Meta has been announcing several changes to its policies in preparation for this hearing, including increased privacy and content protections for teenagers and restrictions on strangers sending direct messages to minors on Instagram. Meta will have to answer questions about whether it has knowingly damaged teenage users’ mental health. The company has been slow to adopt policies that emphasize protecting children over profit, the New Mexico attorney general alleged in a lawsuit.
