Who would have thought. Musk's social network has the most problems with advertising transparency
April 18, 16:15 Share:
X's transparency tools are a total disappointment (Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic)
X ( Twitter) performed worst in a test of the availability of data that can help users, journalists and human rights advocates keep a close eye on fraud and disinformation on the platform.
Mozilla and CheckFirst conducted a test that analyzed a dozen ad transparency tools created by technology platforms to help researchers. In particular, X, TikTok, LinkedIn, Alphabet's Google Search, Meta and Apple sites were checked. Using the guidance from the European Union Digital Services Act ( DSA) 2023 and Mozilla's internal advertising library guidelines, the organizations scanned these platforms' ad repositories to see if data on ad content and who ordered and targeted them was publicly available..
According to Mashable, a study found that most of the world's largest platforms do not offer functionally useful ad storage.. And X turned out to be the worst platform for data availability and search capabilities. Only one CSV file was provided to the researchers.
“X's transparency tools are a total disappointment. Its repository does not offer filtering or sorting capabilities; Ads can only be accessed via a cumbersome CSV export file. The content of the advertisement is not disclosed ( Ad URL only) and there are also gaps in targeting options and recipient data. And searching for historical content is almost impossible. All this may be the reason why the European Commission included the X ad repository in its official proceedings against the platform under the DSA,” says Mozilla EU representative Claire Perchan.
The researchers note that having information about who pays for advertising and who it targets is critical to helping observers monitor public affairs issues like elections or the fight against global warming.
“If you see an ad that tells you that climate change is a hoax, you might be wondering if the ad is being paid for by the fossil fuel industry,” explains CheckFirst co-founder and CTO Amaury Lesplingart.
However, we also noticed positive trends. Over the past five years, Google and Facebook have updated their services with ad targeting criteria, acquisition data, historical data, and improved filtering.
Read also: Musk’s Twitter policy contributed to the spread of Russian propaganda – European analysts The EU recognized social network X as the largest source of Russian disinformation Hate speech. New research shows that X Elon Musk makes money by promoting war content