Facebook Political Ad Collector
Facebook Political Ad Collector - Firefox Add-on
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Add-on summary
Ad Observer is a crowdsourcing tool that will gather ads from a user's Facebook news feed—to enable investigative journalism and research.
The project has new home and a new name. It is run by the Cybersecurity for Democracy at New York University. This project used to be called the Political Ad Collector. Stewardship of the project was previously maintained by Quartz, The Globe and Mail and by ProPublica.
When users log into Facebook, the tool will collect the ads displayed on the user's news feed and guess which ones are political.
The tool does not collect any personally identifiable information. We will not know which ads are shown to which user. The political ads that are collected will be contributed to a database.
We use the ads for research and journalistic purposes: covering Facebook, political messaging and digital advertising tactics.
User reviews
These summaries are automatically generated weekly using AI based on recent user reviews.
Firefox Browser Add-ons does not verify user reviews, so some user reviews may be inaccurate,
spammy, or outdated.- Very good cause and no negative side effects.
- This is a benefit to the web and hopefully helps convince Facebook that they need far more transparency and disclosure.
- Love tools that help increase transparency and accountability of political ad spending - this is a great and easy way to help do that!
- It's slowing down my FB News Feed.
- The current version seems too predictable.
- regular ads
- political ads
User reviews
Add-on safety
Risk impact
Facebook Political Ad Collector requires a few sensitive permissions. Exercise caution before installing.
Risk likelihood
Facebook Political Ad Collector has earned a fairly good reputation and likely can be trusted.