Well, this is rich. Facebook, a voracious collector of data, has its knickers in a twist because a group of academics is... collecting Facebook data. The NYU Ad Observatory is in the midst of a huge project to figure out how people are targeted with political ads. And Zuckerberg & Co. are feeling a wee bit intruded upon. According to The Wall Street Journal, Facebook sent a letter to the NYU researchers demanding they just stop it. “Scraping tools, no matter how well-intentioned, are not a permissible means of collecting information from us,” it said.