- Culture
- 08 May 18
Following pressure from Hot Press, among others, Facebook has decided to refuse advertising from foreign groups seeking to influence the referendum on the Eighth Amendment.
Starting today and lasting until the referendum on repealing the 8th on May 25, Facebook will be asking those who wish to post ads concerning the campaign for proof of Irish residency.
Hot Press has been actively pursuing the Social Media Monopoly for answers to a series of questions relating to this issue – and so the decision can be seen as a victory for the campaign which the magazine has been running.
That this is a welcome move is obvious. However, questions remain as to whether it goes far enough.
Hot Press, along with a number of pro-choice activist groups, had voiced concerned about how foreign organisations had been using social media to try to impact on the vote.
“The kind of lies peddled on Facebook political ads could never be allowed on RTÉ," Hot Press editor Niall Stokes said in a recent editorial in the magazine. "But it is pervasive: in advertising terms right now, social media is the equivalent of the wild west.
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“We are asking Mark Zuckerberg how can he justify what is a bizarrely privileged position, where he can take the bad money and run?”
In a statement issued today, Facebook stated that, as part of its "efforts to help protect the integrity of elections and referendums from undue influence, we will begin rejecting ads related to the referendum if they are being run by advertisers based outside of Ireland."
It continued: "Our company approach is to build tools to increase transparency around political advertising so that people know who is paying for the ads they are seeing, and to ensure any organisation running a political ad is located in that country."
What Facebook omitted to say was how much had been spent so far by either side on referendum-related ads; how many of these ads, and how much revenue, had come from outside the jurisdiction; and to what extent Facebook might already have contributed to distorting the referendum vote by allowing international forces to micro-target unsuspecting Irish voters, and in particular 'undecideds'.
Meanwhile, Google – which owns YouTube – is likely to come under immense pressure to follow suit. Ads have been appearing alongside YouTube videos, which potentially might be viewed by children. It is also unclear how much advertising YouTube has run which originated outside the jurisdiction.
Hot Press is now calling on Google to follow Facebook’s lead on this issue – and indeed to go further by refusing all Referendum-related advertising, not least given the misinformation being peddled by the various 'no' campaigns.
“There is a real question as to whether Facebook have gone far enough,” Niall Stokes, who has written extensively on the issue, and who posed questions to Facebook, said today, in response to the Facebook statement. “I don't think they have. It is still the case that there is no proper regulation of advertising on social media – which means that false and deliberately misleading advertising is allowed to flourish. No one knows how much is being spent – on either side. And so it is not a question of fake news – but fake advertising.
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“There is a further issue of the use and abuse of data innocently supplied to Facebook – and mined, either illicitly or otherwise, by the kind of marketing company which specialises in covert campaigns of one kind or another.
"We have already asked questions of the Minister for Communications, Denis Naughton, in relation to the very obvious failure of the State to understand or to legislate to protect the basic democratic freedoms that have been put at risk by Facebook, and other Transnational Surveillance Capitalist Monoliths.
"But at least, Facebook has responded to the pressure exerted by Hot Press, and others, in a way which improves the situation to some extent."