INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Facebook has announced it rolled out a basic layer of political ads transparency globally, more than a year after launching the publicly
searchable ads archive in the US.
It is also expanding what it dubs &proactive enforcement& on political ads to countries where elections or
regulations are approaching — starting with Ukraine, Singapore, Canada and Argentina.
&Beginning today, we will systematically detect and
review ads in Ukraine and Canada through a combination of automated and human review,& it writes in a blog post setting out the latest
&In Singapore and Argentina, we will begin enforcement within the next few months
We also plan to roll out the Ad Library Reportin both of those countries after enforcement is in place.
&The Ad Library Report will allow
you to track and download aggregate spend data across advertisers and regions.&
Facebook is still not enforcing identity checks on political
advertisers in the vast majority of markets where it operates
Nor indeed monitoring whether political advertisers have included ‘paid for& disclaimer labels — leaving the burden of policing how its
ads platform is being used (and potentially misused) to concerned citizens, civic society and journalists.
The social network behemoth
currently requires advertisers to get authorized and add disclaimers to political and issue-related ads in around 50 countries and
territories — with around 140 other markets where it not enforcing identity checks or disclaimers.
&For all other countries included in
today announcement, we will not be proactively detecting or reactively reviewing possible social issue, electoral or political ads at this
time,& it confirms, before adding: &However, we strongly encourage advertisers in those countries to authorize and add the proper
disclaimers, especially in a rapidly evolving regulatory landscape.&
&In all cases, it will be up to the advertiser to comply with any
applicable electoral or advertising laws and regulations in the countries they want to run ads in
If we are made aware of an ad that is in violation of a law, we will act quickly to remove it
With these tools, regulators are now better positioned to consider how to protect elections with sensible regulations, which they are
uniquely suited to do,& Facebook continues.
&In countries where we are not yet detecting or reviewing these types of ads, these tools
provide their constituents with more information about who influencing their vote — and we suggest voters and local regulators hold these
elected officials and influential groups accountable as well.&
In a related development it says it expanded access to its Ad Library API
globally.
It also claims to have made improvements to the tool, which launched in March — but quickly attracted criticism from the
research community for lacking basics like ad targeting criteria and engagement metrics making it difficult for outsiders to quantify how
Facebook platform is being used to influence elections.
A review of the API by Mozilla shortly after it launched slated Facebook for not
providing researchers with the necessary data to study how political influence operations play out on its platform — with a group of sixty
academics put their name to the open letter saying the API does the opposite of what the company claims.
Facebook does not mention that
criticism in today blog post
It has also provided little detail of the claimed &improvements& to the API — merely writing: &Since we expanded access in March, we&ve
made improvements to our API so people can easily access ads from a given country and analyze specific advertisers
We&re also working on making it easier to programmatically access ad images, videos and recently served ads.&
Commenting on the development,
Ashley Boyd, VP of the Mozilla Foundation, told TechCrunch: &It is outrageous that Facebook would further deploy a tool that been found
deficient and defective by independent researchers
In fact, the version of the tool released earlier this year for the EU elections earned a ‘failing& grade by Mozilla, when it failed to
meet three out of five of the requirements developed by researchers.
&This rollout may serve Facebook PR purposes, but we have no reason to
believe it will help researchers and political leaders seeking to understand the scope and impact of misinformation on our democracy.&
The
other key election interference concern linked to Facebook platforms — and which the company also avoids mention of here — is how
non-advertising content can be seeded and spread on its networks in a bid to influence political opinion.
In recent years Facebook has
announced various discoveries of inauthentic behavior and/or fake accounts
Though it is under no regulatory obligations to disclose everything it finds, or indeed to find every fake.
Hence political ads are just the
tip of the disinformation iceberg.
This report was updated with comment from the Mozilla Foundation
