ZUZunarJ5·Mar 10, 2023
The code is open source on GitHub.
https://github.com/CybersecurityForDemocracy/social-media-co...
In Twitter’s $42k-per-month API prices out nearly everyoneCybersecurityForDemocracy
social-media-collector
JavaScript2020–2023
CybersecurityForDemocracy / social-media-collector
social-media-collector
A browser extension to share data about your social feed with researchers and journalists to increase transparency.
3Distinct people
4Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
85GitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
A browser extension to share data about your social feed with researchers and journalists to increase transparency.
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by month4 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2020-10-28 17:00:58 UTC to 2023-03-10 22:27:58 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 2020 | 2020-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Nov 2020 | 2020-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Dec 2020 | 2020-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jan 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Feb 2021 | 2021-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mar 2021 | 2021-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Apr 2021 | 2021-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 2021 | 2021-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jun 2021 | 2021-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 2021 | 2021-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Aug 2021 | 2021-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Sep 2021 | 2021-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 2021 | 2021-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Nov 2021 | 2021-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Dec 2021 | 2021-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jan 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Feb 2022 | 2022-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mar 2022 | 2022-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Apr 2022 | 2022-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 2022 | 2022-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jun 2022 | 2022-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 2022 | 2022-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Aug 2022 | 2022-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 2022 | 2022-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 2022 | 2022-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Nov 2022 | 2022-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Dec 2022 | 2022-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jan 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Feb 2023 | 2023-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mar 2023 | 2023-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
4 sources>"There are no guarantees that the scraped data will be used for just academic purposes"
The whole point in the project is to make the scraped data available to anyone and everyone who is interested. They publish this data via a public database. This is articulated very clearly at the top of the Ad Observatory project page.
"Ad Observer is a tool you add to your Web browser. It copies the ads you see on Facebook and YouTube, so anyone can see them in our public database."[1]
The Ad Observatory project collects the following:
"What we collect
The advertiser's name and disclosure string.
The ad's text, image, and link.
The information Facebook provides about how the ad was targeted.
When the ad was shown to you.
Your browser language."
Additionally the code for the browser plugin is up on github[2]. How much more transparent could they be?
Read the rest
The plug-in is open sourced: https://github.com/OnlinePoliticalTransparency/social-media-...
You can download a release straight from there and import it into your browser. Browsers also do some reviews of the plugins that are in their stores, so every update should be tested by both Google and Mozilla (even if only superficially).
I'd say the odds of them managing to pull off scraping anything else without anyone noticing are rather slim.
In Facebook Is Going After Its Critics in the Name of PrivacyThe "thisisyourdigitallife" was not developed by the Psychometrics Lab it was developed by Kogan(a lecturer at Cambridge University) who by then had formed his own company called Global Science Research Ltd (GSR.) GSR signed the contract with SCL Elections and sold the Kogan app to them. SCL Elections being the parent of Cambridge Analytica.
Kogan's app was based on the myPersonality app which was developed by Kosinski and Dr David Stillwell who did work at the Psychometrics Lab and denied Kogan access to their dataset. Cambridge Analytica and Cambridge University are not the same thing at all. So there is no comparison to NYU and Cambridge Analytica or Cambridge University for that matter.
Saying I'm "putting a lot of weight on the intention behind this use" is kind of a bizarre statement considering the data is literally available to e
Read the rest
verybody. See:
https://adobserver.org/ad-database/
The Project also clearly states:
">If you want, you can enter basic demographic information about yourself in the tool to help improve our understanding of why advertisers targeted you. However, we’ll never ask for information that could identify you"
And to that end the code for the plugin that the Ad Observatory project is used also freely available:
https://github.com/OnlinePoliticalTransparency/social-media-...
How much more transparent can you get than that? The goal of the Ad Observatory project is literally to try to understand how we are being targeted and manipulated. How is this in anyway the same as the secret harvesting of data by a political consultancy that billed itself as providing "election management" services?