Laura Edelson on why her research got her banned by Facebook

Host Tavis Smiley interviews Laura Edelson, a Ph.D. candidate in computer science at NYU Tandon School of Engineering and founder of the Ad Observatory project and Cybersecurity for Democracy, about the importance of academic freedom, and the necessity of transparency between platforms and their users. She explained why she and her colleagues were banned by Facebook just as they were starting to discover the complexities of ... political and medical disinformation on the world's biggest social media platform.

“I have gotten emails from people who are really unhappy with Facebook, because they have felt like ads have targeted them in exploitative ways, or they have been unhappy about how Facebook has used their data. Honestly, that has just meant the world to us. ... One thing we know is that this work is just too critical to stop… there really is an epidemic of misinformation and hate online. Whatever we do, we’re not stopping,” said Edelson.