It's even stronger than that:

Facebook felt Ad Observer was a breach of users’ privacy and issued the researchers a warning in a meeting last summer, before the tool was even launched. In October, two weeks before the presidential election, Facebook sent a cease-and-desist letter, giving them 45 days to shut it down.

Did this project make that part public at the time? All these articles bemoaning being locked out of faceberg pretend that they are entitled to be there. If the movie stinks, just don't go.