Thank you so much for the question.
I think it needs to be investigated across the board. It's not just the case that Facebook is funding research. They are also providing contracts to researchers, not just at universities but also in civil society. It's an attempt to make academia and research into a wing of their own PR.
What they have in these contracts, which I think is awful, are kill clauses or veto clauses that say Facebook has the right to read your research prior to publication and to decide if they think it has met their privacy standards. Privacy isn't just about users; it's also about the corporate products themselves. If you're a researcher and you want to study the algorithmic impact of Facebook's products, you have to be very careful that you're not also sharing what Facebook would consider trade secrets, or they could shut your research down if they were funding you.
This experience isn't just my own. There were two other whistle-blowers—one at McGill and another at Berkeley—who came forward in the Washington Post just after I did. One of the researchers at Berkeley had a grant from Facebook, and they called him after he said something critical and said, “You shouldn't be doing this; we're friends.”
I think it's really important to understand that Facebook has executives who have taken up positions on advisory boards at universities across the U.S. and Canada. They use that soft power and influence to direct research agendas.
We need a full court press from governments across the globe to understand the web of influence that Facebook has created across academia.