Facebook touted a new political ad archive this week as a way to improve accountability and transparency on the platform. Along with that announcement, the company said it will create a tool that third-party groups can use to access the archive's data.

For Facebook, this is murky territory, because giving outside app developers access to its network is what got the company into so much trouble in the first place, and is a big reason why it needed to change its approach to political ads.

Raj Goel, the chief technology officer at Brainlink and a cyber civil rights advocate, said that the only way Facebook can show it's serious is by letting neutral parties (sort of like auditors) analyze the application programming interface (API) and make sure that it's safe.

"The billion-dollar question is whether or not Facebook will invite objective third parties, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, to examine the system," Goel said. "That would lend it a lot more credibility and a higher trust factor."

Facebook 's new archive includes data about any ad that falls under the political umbrella, whether it's tied to an election or an issue. When users click through to a label on the ad, they will be taken to the archive, where they can view who's behind the ad and how much was spent on it. The archive will also include aggregate data about the age, location and gender of users who viewed the ads.

On a conference call with reporters on Thursday, Rob Leathern, a product director at Facebook, said the company is in the process of building an API to accompany the political ad archive.