What do you believe is the single most important factor driving up the cost of living in Nigeria?

"I have grad students interested in how online extremism works, the consequences of political polarization, whether content moderation is actually effective at stopping hate speech," said Keegan, an assistant professor of information science at the College of Media, Communication and Information at the University of Colorado Boulder.

"To be able to understand questions like these requires access to data from these platforms—and restricting it imperils our ability to be impactful in our work."

Earlier this month, Meta announced it was shutting down CrowdTangle, one of the most effective tools for understanding how Facebook and Instagram's algorithms work and how disinformation is created and spread on the company's platforms.

That's a blow to researchers, watchdogs and journalists who will be less able to track how disinformation, hate speech and other poisons pollute the social media atmosphere—but in the context of business decisions, there are strong financial and reputational benefits to obfuscating its operations.

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