Facebook is aware of the deceptive advertising practices that circulated in the platform during elections but made little effort to moderate content run by trolls.
Deceiving Advertising Practices on Facebook
During the 2018 midterm elections, several Facebook ads targeted progressive voters in competitive races across the Midwest to urge them to vote for Green Party candidates.
The ads in question featured several prominent progressive Democrats, including Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which looked like they were advocating voting for third parties.
Now, the campaigns appear sketchy to most people because of two reasons. First, two candidates featured in the ads said they did not approve or release the ads. Plus, the supposed quotes that appeared alongside their photos also did not come from them.
Second, six of the candidates said they had no connection to the group advertising the post.
Sanders' office requested that Facebook remove the campaign, calling it "clearly a malicious attempt to mislead voters."
Interestingly, VICE News and ProPublica went further with the ads and revealed that the group running the ads is not affiliated with the Federal Election Commission and the organization America Progress Now had listed on its Facebook page.
According to Facebook, as a response to Senator Sanders' office, as well as a statement to ProPublica and VICE, they investigated the group and determined that it did not violate its advertising policies or community standards.
During the lead-up to the 2020 elections, a Washington Post investigation revealed that Rally Forge, a digital marketing agency with ties to Turning Point Action (an affiliate of the conservative youth group Turning Point USA) was running an operation akin to a "troll farm."
It turns out that these troll farms recruited and directed teenagers to make pro-Trump comments by creating false identities on Facebook and Twitter. This revelation led to multiple accounts being taken down by Facebook and Twitter, and Rally Forge was permanently banned from Facebook.
An analysis by The Guardian in June of 2021, aided in part by Facebook whistleblower Sophie Zhang, revealed that Rally Forge was responsible for the America Progress Now ads during the 2018 midterm elections.
Facebook Enabled Deceptive Ads
Reports showed that Facebook was further aware of the source of the ads and their misleading nature and Turning Point's connection to Rally Forge when it determined it did not breach its policy.
At the time, Facebook decided not to be transparent with its findings following further reports made by the Guardian and Washington Post.
But The Guardian saw internal Facebook documents where an employee protecting civic integrity noted that the ads were not authentic and appeared sketchy.
After the 2018 investigation, in which America Progress Now was not found to have violated Facebook policies on election interference, a Facebook spokesperson told The Guardian that it had "strengthened our policies related to election interference and political ad transparency.".
Facebook has also launched a new policy to bring greater transparency to Facebook Pages networks.
Read Article: New Facebook Whistleblower To Provide New Evidence About Alleged FB's Failure To Fight Election Interference
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Written by Thea Felicity
