Facebook admits it cannot track all political adverts

Advertising by pro-Brexit group Leave.EU during the EU referendum campaign. Photograph: Facebook. - Credit: Archant

Social media network Facebook has admitted it cannot track all of the political adverts that appear on its platform.

In a conference call with journalists ahead of the general election, Facebook said it was better prepared than ever for dealing with misinformation and had set up a special operations centre where staff would work to combat the misuse of the platform.

But its advertising functionality has continually raised questions when it comes to politics – and it is increasingly under pressure to follow Twitter in stopping advertising for this area.

Asked what it was doing to stop political advertisers getting round its rules, Rob Leathern, director of product for its business integrity team, told PA the company was still reliant on users to flag things it had missed.

“It’s important to realise we are not going to be perfect, we are continually improving and there is a lot of improvement as we track this across global elections,” he said.

“We do rely on people who use the platform to also provide feedback to us about how we can continue to improve those systems.”

One such advert taken down in recent days was published by a page called the Fair Tax Campaign, a lobbying group run by former Boris Johnson aide Alex Crowley.

The sponsored advert asked: “Could you afford an extra £214 each month? That’s what Labour’s tax plans would mean for EVERYONE.”

The advert was taken down after the page failed to label it is political, which would have required it to display who paid to have it promoted in users’ feeds.

Nathaniel Gleicher, head of cybersecurity policy, added: “We are not going to catch everything and we know we are not going to catch everything. You have to prepare when you are working in a security perspective for the world in which you might not catch everything.

“That has to be part of the strategy. And transparency means even the ones that we do miss, we can be held accountable.

“Being held accountable in that way isn’t always comfortable but it’s really important as many eyes and as many experts can engage with this as possible.”

Facebook has announced plans to improve transparency after a number of pages were able to post political adverts despite offering no clear information about who was operating them.

In one such example, a pro-Brexit page named the Mainstream Network posted a series of sponsored posts throughout 2018 encouraging users to email their MPs about Theresa May’s Brexit deal.

The page was estimated to have spent over a quarter of a million pounds on these ads in just over 10 months, according to consultancy group 89up.

Despite this, no information was offered on the platform about who posted or paid for the adverts.

The social network said its policy would now require those running such “opaque” pages to give clear information about who runs them, or face being shut down.