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Research Ethics Committee

The Research Ethics Committee (REC) of Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) was approved by the Vice-Chancellor and established in 2004. The Committee is on Tier 2 (Executive), under the governance of UiTM Research and Innovation, where it reports to the University Research Committee (JKIPU) and to the UiTM Senate.

The objectives of REC are to safeguard the rights, safety and well-being of human research participants, provide timely, comprehensive and independent review of the ethics of proposed studies and ensure that the research complies with existing laws and regulations. The responsibility of the REC includes, but is not limited to the approval/disapproval, amendment or termination of studies which do not conform to the standard guidelines.

All research proposals involving human subjects in UiTM must be approved by the UiTM REC prior to the start of research.  When the research involves using the facilities of the Ministry of Health (MOH), researchers should obtain approval from the Medical and Research Ethics Committee (MREC) of the MOH.

The Research Ethics Committee of Universiti Teknologi MARA is registered with the Drug Control Authority, National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency until 18 August 2022.

Role of the Research Ethics Committee (REC)

The Research Ethics Committee was established to review the ethics of any research involving human participants conducted in UiTM premises and/or by UiTM researchers. REC should uphold proper ethical standards in scientific research to protect the dignity, rights and welfare of research participants as well as the researchers.

The roles of the REC are to: a)    review applications for ethics approval for research involving human; b)    decide the categories of risk into:

minimal risk - the probability and magnitude of harm or discomfort anticipated in the research are not greater in and of themselves than those ordinarily encountered in daily life or during the performance of routine physical or psychological examinations or tests.

more than minimal risk - research activities that present greater than minimal risk to human subjects.

[Note: The Research Risk Classification Form (REC 3) completed by applicants will be used to assist risk categorization.]

c)    approve or disapprove of the proposed research; d)    impose restrictions and conditions on research, if necessary; e)    review submitted progress reports; f)     suspend or revoke approval of research, if necessary.  

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What we know about unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S.

The unauthorized immigrant population in the United States reached 10.5 million in 2021, according to new Pew Research Center estimates. That was a modest increase over 2019 but nearly identical to 2017.

The number of unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. in 2021 remained below its peak of 12.2 million in 2007. It was about the same size as in 2004 and lower than every year from 2005 to 2015.

The new estimates do not reflect changes that have occurred since apprehensions and expulsions of migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border started increasing in March 2021 . Migrant encounters at the border have since reached historic highs .

Pew Research Center undertook this research to understand ongoing changes in the size and characteristics of the unauthorized immigrant population in the United States. The Center has published estimates of the U.S. unauthorized immigrant population for more than two decades. The estimates presented in this research are the Center’s latest, adding new and updated annual estimates for 2017 through 2021.

Center estimates of the unauthorized immigrant population use a “residual method.” It is similar to methods used by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Immigration Statistics and nongovernmental organizations, including the Center for Migration Studies and the Migration Policy Institute . Those organizations’ estimates are generally consistent with ours. Our estimates also align with official U.S. data sources, including birth records, school enrollment figures and tax data, as well as Mexican censuses and surveys.

Our “residual” method for estimating the nation’s unauthorized immigrant population includes these steps:

• Estimate the total number of immigrants living in the country in a particular year using data from U.S. censuses and government surveys such as the American Community Survey and the Current Population Survey.
• Estimate the number of immigrants living in the U.S. legally using official counts of immigrant and refugee admissions together with other demographic data (for example, death and out-migration rates).
• Subtract our estimate of lawful immigrants from our estimate of the total immigrant population . This provides an initial estimate of the unauthorized immigrant population .

Our final estimate of the U.S. unauthorized immigrant population, as well as estimates for lawful immigrants, includes an upward adjustment. We do this because censuses and surveys tend to miss some people . Undercounts for immigrants, especially unauthorized immigrants, tend to be higher than for other groups. (Our 1990 estimate comes from work by Robert Warren and John Robert Warren; details can be found here .)

The term “unauthorized immigrant” reflects standard and customary usage by many academic researchers and policy analysts. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Immigration Statistics also generally uses it. The term means the same thing as undocumented immigrants, illegal immigrants and illegal aliens.

For more details on how we produced our estimates, read the Methodology section of our November 2018 report on unauthorized immigrants.

The unauthorized immigrant population includes any immigrants not in the following groups:

• Immigrants admitted for lawful residence (i.e., green card admissions)
• People admitted formally as refugees
• People granted asylum
• Former unauthorized immigrants granted legal residence under the 1985 Immigration Reform and Control Act
• Immigrants admitted under any of categories 1-4 who have become naturalized U.S. citizens
• Individuals admitted as lawful temporary residents under specific visa categories

Read the Methodology section of our November 2018 report on unauthorized immigrants for more details.

Pew Research Center’s estimate of unauthorized immigrants includes more than 2 million immigrants who have temporary permission to be in the United States. (Some also have permission to work in the country.) These immigrants account for about 20% of our national estimate of 10.5 million unauthorized immigrants for 2021.

Although these immigrants have permission to be in the country, they could be subject to deportation if government policy changes. Other organizations and the federal government also include these immigrants in their estimates of the U.S. unauthorized immigrant population.

Immigrants can receive temporary permission to be in the U.S. through the following ways:

Temporary Protected Status (TPS)

In 2021, there were about 500,000 unauthorized immigrants with Temporary Protected Status . This status provides protection from removal or deportation to individuals who cannot safely return to their country because of civil unrest, violence or natural disaster.

Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) is a similar program that grants protection from removal. The number of immigrants with DED is much smaller than the number with TPS.

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals is a program that offers protection from deportation to individuals who were brought to the U.S. as children before June 15, 2007. As of the end of 2021, there were slightly more than 600,000 DACA beneficiaries , largely immigrants from Mexico.

Asylum applicants

Individuals who have applied for asylum but are awaiting a ruling are not legal residents yet but cannot be deported. There are two types of asylum claims, defensive and affirmative .

Defensive asylum applications are generally filed by individuals facing deportation or removal from the U.S. These are processed by the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review. At the end of 2021, there were almost 600,000 applications pending.

Affirmative asylum claims are made by individuals already in the U.S. who are not in the process of being deported or removed. These claims are handled by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). At the end of 2021, more than 400,000 applications for affirmative asylum were pending, some covering more than one applicant.

Here are key findings about how the U.S. unauthorized immigrant population changed from 2017 to 2021:

• The most common country of birth for unauthorized immigrants is Mexico. However, the population of unauthorized immigrants from Mexico dropped by 900,000 from 2017 to 2021 , to 4.1 million.
• There were increases in unauthorized immigrants from nearly every other region of the world – Central America, the Caribbean, South America, Asia, Europe and sub-Saharan Africa.
• Among U.S. states, only Florida and Washington saw increases to their unauthorized immigrant populations , while California and Nevada saw decreases. In all other states, unauthorized immigrant populations were unchanged.
• 4.6% of U.S. workers in 2021 were unauthorized immigrants , virtually identical to the share in 2017.

Trends in the U.S. immigrant population

The U.S. foreign-born population was 14.1% of the nation’s population in 2021. That was very slightly higher than in the last five years but below the record high of 14.8% in 1890.

As of 2021, the nation’s 10.5 million unauthorized immigrants represented about 3% of the total U.S. population and 22% of the foreign-born population. These shares were among the lowest since the 1990s.

Between 2007 and 2021, the unauthorized immigrant population decreased by 1.75 million, or 14%.

Meanwhile, the lawful immigrant population grew by more than 8 million, a 29% increase, and the number of naturalized U.S. citizens grew by 49%. In 2021, naturalized citizens accounted for about half (49%) of all immigrants in the country.

Where unauthorized immigrants come from

Unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. come from many parts of the world, with Mexico being the most common origin country.

The origin countries for unauthorized immigrants have changed since the population peaked in 2007, before the Great Recession slowed immigration. Here are some highlights of those changes:

The number of unauthorized immigrants from Mexico living in the U.S. (4.1 million in 2021) was the lowest since the 1990s. Mexico accounted for 39% of the nation’s unauthorized immigrants in 2021, by far the smallest share on record .

The decrease in unauthorized immigrants from Mexico reflects several factors:

• A broader decline in migration from Mexico to the U.S.
• Mexican immigrants to the U.S. continuing to return to Mexico
• Expanded opportunities for lawful immigration from Mexico and other countries, especially for temporary agricultural workers.

The rest of the world

The total number of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. from countries other than Mexico has grown rapidly. In 2021, this population was 6.4 million, up by 900,000 from 2017.

Almost every region in the world had a notable increase in the number of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. from 2007 to 2021. The largest increases were from Central America (240,000) and South and East Asia (180,000).

After Mexico, the countries of origin with the largest unauthorized immigrant populations in the U.S. in 2021 were:

• El Salvador (800,000)
• India (725,000)
• Guatemala (700,000)
• Honduras (525,000)

India, Guatemala and Honduras all saw increases from 2017.

The Northern Triangle

Three Central American countries – El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala – together represented 2.0 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. in 2021, or almost 20% of the total. The unauthorized immigrant population from the Northern Triangle grew by about 250,000 from 2017 and about 700,000 from 2007.

Other origin countries

Venezuela was the country of birth for 190,000 U.S. unauthorized immigrants in 2021. This population saw particularly fast growth, from 130,000 in 2017 and 55,000 in 2007.

Among countries with the largest numbers of U.S. unauthorized immigrants, India, Brazil, Canada and former Soviet Union countries all experienced growth from 2017 to 2021.

Some origin countries with significant unauthorized immigrant populations showed no change, notably China (375,000) and the Dominican Republic (230,000).

Detailed table: Unauthorized immigrant population by region and selected country of birth (and margins of error), 1990-2021 (Excel)

U.S. states of residence of unauthorized immigrants

The unauthorized immigrant population in most U.S. states stayed steady from 2017 to 2021. However, four states saw significant changes:

• Florida (+80,000)
• Washington (+60,000)
• California (-150,000)
• Nevada (-25,000)

States with the most unauthorized immigrants

The six states with the largest unauthorized immigrant populations in 2021 were:

• California (1.9 million)
• Texas (1.6 million)
• Florida (900,000)
• New York (600,000)
• New Jersey (450,000)
• Illinois (400,000)

These states have consistently had the most unauthorized immigrants since 1990 and earlier .

At the same time, the unauthorized immigrant population has become less geographically concentrated. In 2021, these six states were home to 56% of the nation’s unauthorized immigrants, down from 80% in 1990.

Detailed table: Unauthorized immigrant population for states (and margins of error), 1990-2021 (Excel)

Detailed table: Unauthorized immigrants and characteristics for states, 2021 (Excel)

Unauthorized immigrants in the labor force

The share of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. workforce was slightly less than 5% in 2021, compared with 3% of the total U.S. population.

Demographics help explain the difference: The unauthorized immigrant population includes relatively few children or elderly adults, groups that tend not to be in the labor force.

Overall, about 7.8 million unauthorized immigrants were in the U.S. labor force in 2021. That was up slightly from 2019 but smaller than every year from 2007 through 2015.

Detailed table: Unauthorized immigrants in the labor force for states, 2021 (Excel)

Here are some additional findings about unauthorized immigrants as a share of the workforce nationwide and in certain states:

• Since 2003, unauthorized immigrants have made up 4.4% to 5.4% of all U.S. workers, a relatively narrow range.
• Fewer than 1% of workers in Maine, Montana, Vermont and West Virginia in 2021 were unauthorized immigrants.
• Nevada (9%) and Texas (8%) had the highest shares of unauthorized immigrants in the workforce.
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Latinos’ views on the migrant situation at the u.s.-mexico border, key facts about the nation’s 47.9 million black americans, key facts about the wealth of immigrant households during the covid-19 pandemic, 8 facts about recent latino immigrants to the u.s., most popular.

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Despite High Potential, 75 Vulnerable Economies Face ‘Historic Reversal’

In Half of IDA Countries, Income Gap with Wealthiest Economies is Widening

WASHINGTON, April 15, 2024 — Despite their high potential to advance global prosperity, one-half of the world’s 75 most vulnerable countries are facing a widening income gap with the wealthiest economies for the first time in this century, a new World Bank report has found . Taking full advantage of their younger populations, their rich natural resources, and their abundant solar-energy potential can help them overcome the setback.

The report, The Great Reversal: Prospects, Risks, and Policies in International Development Association Countries , offers the first comprehensive look at the opportunities and risks confronting the 75 countries eligible for grants and zero to low-interest loans from the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA). These countries are home to a quarter of humanity—1.9 billion people. At a time when populations are aging nearly everywhere else, IDA countries will enjoy a growing share of young workers through 2070—a huge potential “demographic dividend.” These countries are also rich in natural resources, enjoy high potential for solar-energy generation, and boast a large reservoir of mineral deposits that could be crucial for the world’s transition to clean energy.

Yet a historic reversal is underway for them. Over 2020-24, average per capita incomes in half of IDA countries—the largest share since the start of this century—have been growing more slowly than those of wealthy economies. This is widening the income gap between these two groups of countries. One out of three IDA countries is poorer, on average, than it was on the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic . The extreme-poverty rate is more than eight times the average in the rest of the world: one in four people in IDA countries struggles on less than $2.15 a day. These countries now account for 90% of all people facing hunger or malnutrition. Half of these countries are either in debt distress or at high risk of it. Still, except for the World Bank Group and other multilateral development donors, foreign lenders—private as well as government creditors—have been backing away from them.

“The world cannot afford to turn its back on IDA countries,” said Indermit Gill, the World Bank Group’s Chief Economist and Senior Vice President . “The welfare of these countries has always been crucial to the long-term outlook for global prosperity. Three of the world’s economic powerhouses today—China, India, and South Korea—were all once IDA borrowers. All three prospered in ways that whittled down extreme poverty and raised living standards. With help from abroad, today’s batch of IDA countries has the potential to do the same.”

More than half of all IDA countries—39 in all—are in Sub-Saharan Africa. Fourteen of them—mainly small island states—are in East Asia, and eight are in Latin America and the Caribbean. In South Asia, all countries except for India are IDA countries. Thirty-one IDA countries have per capita incomes of less than $1,315 a year. Thirty-three are fragile and conflict-affected states.

IDA countries share similar opportunities. The “demographic dividend”—a deep and growing reserve of young workers—is one of them. Abundant natural resources is another. These countries account for about 20% of global production of tin, copper, and gold. In addition, some IDA countries possess critical mineral deposits essential for the global energy transition. Because of their abundant sunshine, most IDA countries are well situated to take advantage of solar energy. On average, their long-term daily solar-electricity generation potential is among the highest in the world.

This potential, however, comes with risks that must be managed. To reap the demographic dividend, IDA governments will need to undertake policies to improve education and health outcomes and make sure that jobs are available for the rising number of young people who will enter the workforce in the coming decades. To seize the full potential of their natural-resource wealth, IDA countries will need to improve policy frameworks and build stronger institutions capable of better economic management. All of this will require ambitious domestic policy reforms—and significant financial support from the international community.

“IDA countries have incredible potential to deliver strong, sustainable, and inclusive growth. Realizing this potential will require them to implement an ambitious set of policies centered on boosting investment,” said Ayhan Kose, the World Bank’s Deputy Chief Economist and Director of the Prospects Group . “ This means improving fiscal, monetary, and financial policy frameworks and advancing an array of structural reforms to strengthen institutions and enhance human capital."

IDA countries today have large investment needs. In the poorest of them, closing existing development and infrastructure gaps and building resilience to climate change will require investment that amounts to nearly 10% of GDP. The costs of climate disasters have doubled in IDA countries over the past decade: Economic losses from natural disasters average 1.3% of GDP a year—four times the average of other emerging market and developing economies. Such needs will require IDA countries to generate sustained investment booms—the type that boosts productivity and incomes and reduces poverty. Historically, such investment booms have often been sparked by a comprehensive package of policy measures—to bolster fiscal and monetary frameworks, ramp up cross-border trade and financial flows, and improve the quality of institutions. Such reforms are never easy, the report notes. They need careful sequencing and implementation. But previous IDA countries have shown they are possible.

IDA countries will need significant international financial support to make progress and lower the risk of “protracted stagnation,” the report notes . Stronger cooperation on global policy issues—including fighting climate change, facilitating more timely and effective debt restructurings, and supporting cross-border trade and investment—will also be crucial to help IDA countries avert a lost decade in development .

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Scripps Research reports progress toward creating vaccine against the harmful ‘zombie’ drug xylazine

An experimental vaccine blocked the toxic effects of the drug — which is frequently added to heroin and illicit fentanyl — in experiments conducted on rodents, according to research published this month

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Scripps Research in La Jolla says it has taken a promising step toward developing a vaccine to fight the effects of xylazine, an animal tranquilizer that’s illicitly added to fentanyl and heroin, triggering a rise in overdose deaths.

The institute’s experimental vaccine blocked xylazine’s toxic effect in experiments conducted on rodents, according to a paper published earlier this month in the journal Chemical Communications. It works by stimulating the immune system to create antibodies that reduce the level of xylazine in the blood stream, the institute said.

Veterinarians regularly use xylazine to sedate or calm everything from sheep and cattle to cats and dogs before surgery or while conducting diagnostic tests. It’s been approved for that purpose by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. But it is not approved for use in humans because it can slow breathing and heart rates and produce dangerously low blood-pressure levels.

Scientists say xylazine, a non-opioid sedative, also can cause skin lesions and wounds that don’t heal and sometimes lead to the need to amputate parts of legs or arms.

Xyaline is often illicitly added to fentanyl and other drugs to lengthen the feeling of euphoria they can give, scientists say. It has taken on the nickname “zombie drug.”

“There is currently no remedy for xylazine poisoning other than supportive care, thus, we believe our research efforts and the data we have provided will pave the way for an effective treatment in humans,” Kim D. Janda, the Scripps chemist who is leading the research, said in a statement.

The precise number of human deaths caused by the addition of xylazine to fentanyl and other drugs is not known. But the Journal of the American Medical Association reported in January that at least 43 states reported deaths related to xylazine, which also is known as “tranq dope.”

Scripps Research is deeply involved in vaccine research and made significant contributions to the COVID-19 vaccines developed by Moderna and by Pfizer and BioNTech.

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Big Tech’s ad transparency tools are still woeful, Mozilla research report finds

Efforts by tech giants to be more transparent about the ads they run are — at very best — still a work in progress, according to a report looking at ads transparency tools. The report comes about a half year since the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA) rules for larger platforms came into force, mandating companies — such as Apple, Google, Meta, TikTok and X — offer a searchable public ads library.

In some cases, notably (but not exclusively) X’s, the level of ad transparency provided by the platform scores close to zero on all fronts, with available tools lacking vital data and functionality per the external assessment, which was conducted by free software maker Mozilla working with CheckFirst, a Finland-based disinformation research company.

The report’s top-line conclusion is that platforms’ ad oversight tools are falling short of delivering the intended transparency and democratic accountability in a critical year for elections globally.

“We find a huge variation among the platforms, but one thing is true across all of them: none is a fully-functional ad repository and none will provide researchers and civil society groups with the tools and data they need to effectively monitor the impact of VLOs [very large online platforms and search engines] on Europe’s upcoming elections,” the report authors write, naming AliExpress and X as the worst examples of those tech giants that do provide an ads library (Amazon has avoided providing one so far), before adding in a line that damns with faint praise: “[W]e struggle to tell you which one is best.”

Europe’s Digital Services Act applies in full from tomorrow — here’s what you need to know

A lack of critical data and effective tools to study platforms means independent researchers still face huge barriers when it comes to producing data-driven insights on the impacts of Big Tech. Without robust public interest research, how can the world’s wealthiest companies be held to account for business models that frequently rely on amping up user engagement to juice more ad views?

Just think of the discussion around social media use and teens’ mental health , as one example. Ads transparency tools that enabled external researchers to study the types of paid messaging targeting young people across different platforms could help shine a light on any problematic dynamics and platform incentives. But adtech giants evidently aren’t making this kind of research easy.

Still, the bald fact of 11 of the world’s largest tech companies providing ad repositories — most doing so as a direct result of the EU regulation — is in itself a basic form of progress, as the research authors see it, even as none of the tools they’re offering are properly enabling researchers yet in their view.

The pan-EU DSA provides for penalties of up to 6% of global annual turnover for compliance failures. So enforcement on poor performance could lead to hefty fines down the line. But despite this dialed-up regulatory risk, the report suggests tech giants aren’t exactly falling over themselves to shine a clarifying spotlight on a targeted messaging that funnels direct revenue into their coffers.

Compliance theater

Indeed, no platform got a “ready for action” green-light assessment from Mozilla and CheckFirst. Meta, which has been operating an ads library the longest, has among the most mature offering in their view, yet its ads library still has “big gaps in data and functionality,” per the report. Likewise, Apple, LinkedIn and TikTok all have similar failings. Alphabet (Google), Booking.com and Pinterest are assessed as offering an even worse “bare minimum” effort.

Alongside the aforementioned “utter disappointment” of AliExpress and X, the report gives the same overall red rating to Bing, Snapchat and Zalando, saying their transparency tools also lack vital data and functionality.

Compliance theater is a concept familiar to EU privacy watchers when it comes to the design of consent flows for collecting permission from web users to track and profile their online activity for micro-targeted advertising. Judging by the report’s findings, something similar may be playing out in platforms’ early responses to DSA demands for ads transparency. Many appear to be seeing how little they can get away with, perhaps with the aim of testing how the Commission, which oversees compliance, responds; or just because they prefer to direct more of their resources into generating revenue than addressing legal compliance.

Around a dozen tech giants that offer very large platforms and/or search engines, which the report refers to as VLOs, face the strictest level of DSA regulation — including the requirement to publish an ads library. Mozilla and CheckFirst stress-tested ad libraries associated with the following e-commerce, social networking and marketplace platforms between December 2023 and January 2024: AliExpress, Alphabet (Google Search and YouTube), Apple App Store, Bing, Booking.com, LinkedIn, Meta (Facebook and Instagram), Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, X and Zalando — conducting independent tests aimed at assessing key issues like the tools’ functionality and reliability.

“We examine factors such as the depth of information provided regarding the advertisement and its advertiser, the targeting criteria employed, and the ad’s reach. Additionally, we evaluate the completeness of the ad repository, the availability of historical data, and the accessibility, consistency, and documentation of the tools provided,” the authors wrote, noting also that most (but not all) platforms provide a separate web-based ad repository and an API — hence they assessed these discrete implementations individually.

“Major gaps”

They do note there has been some developments since they carried out their transparency tools tests. The study is therefore only a snapshot of where things stood about half a year after the late August compliance deadline for VLOs.

They also haven’t assessed some deeper elements, such as the accuracy of information platforms provide — that is, about who is paying for ads. Influencer or branded content is also not assessed. But the tests allow analysis of the pace of progress since compliance day, as well as enabling basic comparisons between platform offerings and shortcomings.

TikTok expands research API to Europe and launches ads transparency library

Among several key findings in the report are concerns related to accuracy issues and missing data. “Our accuracy testing found many cases where ads in the user interface were not found in the ad repository,” they note, adding: “This can limit the usefulness and trustworthiness of the repositories as a transparency tool.”

“We feel there are major gaps between the spirit of the EU regulation and these repositories in practice, which are supposed to ‘facilitate supervision and research into emerging risks brought about by the distribution of advertising online,’” the report authors conclude, pointing out that in the case of X, for example, it only provides a CSV file for download, which they also found to be “curiously slow.” (They argue that this type of historical access is “only useful if you already know everything about the ad you’re searching for,” suggesting that X, under divisive billionaire owner Elon Musk, is essentially attempting to kneecap independent research, even as he claims to respect the law .)

The social network formerly known as Twitter was the first platform to be formally investigated by the EU for suspected breaches of the DSA, including in the area of data access for researchers. That probe, which was opened in December , remains ongoing. But if DSA breaches are confirmed, X is positioned first in line to receive a hefty fine.

Also highlighting how platforms are kicking against the EU’s transparency mandate, at the time the report was compiled, Amazon was not offering an ad library at all — after being granted a temporary exemption from the obligation by an EU court last fall.

A higher court subsequently reversed that decision late last month , so the e-commerce giant will have to put its promotional laundry on the line for external perusal after all. But, as the report suggests, it’s all too easy for platforms to inject intentional friction into transparency tools, whether by restrictive design or sloppy implementation or both. This undermines researchers’ ability to interrogate technosocial impacts and ad-driven business models, by making finding, sorting and filtering data about ads they’ve monetized much harder than it should be.

The report contains a series of recommendations to drive transparency on platforms, including design changes tech giants could implement, such as making ad libraries public without requiring a login; allowing unrestricted browsing; and offering enhanced search functionalities such as supporting searches by keywords, advertiser, country and date range and allowing filtering and ordering of results, to name a few of the suggested changes.

They also suggest steps for enforcers, such as developing guidelines for ads transparency that set minimum standards for what platforms must deliver in web repositories and APIs, and requiring the use of standardized APIs for research access to boost usability and enable cross-platform research.

Amazon will have to publish an ads library in EU after all