[ddj] My analysis of Facebook tracking & US politicians' websites

[Hamdan Azhar]

Hi all,

I wanted to share my analysis of the prevalence of Facebook tracking on the
websites of more than 500 US politicians, recently published in WIRED
magazine:
https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-privacy-candidates-pixel-campaigning

Some key findings:
- 81% of US senators, even some of Facebook's most ardent critics, use
Facebook pixels on their websites
- 31% of US senators websites share exact donation amounts with Facebook
- 176 members of the US House of Representatives have Facebook pixels on
their websites
- Almost every 2020 presidential candidate has Facebook pixels on their
websites

This is important because it calls into question the seriousness of many of
these politicians' claims to want to crack down on Facebook and protect our
privacy. All of the underlying data is in this Github repository (
https://github.com/hamdanazhar/2019-06-pixels-politicians) and also in
this Google
sheet
<https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tfw-DJZQltOfauqSep5nFT66dfm7mDFZ>.

Would welcome any feedback!

Best,
Hamdan

*HAMDAN AZHAR*
Data Scientist | Journalist
hamdan.azhar at gmail.com | hamdanazhar.com
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