Labour rejects ad transparency
Despite a commitment to furthering transparency online, the Labour Party is refusing to sign up to a new transparency tool for its Facebook ads – unless the National Party does too.
That makes the Green Party the only parliamentary political party in New Zealand to sign up to the Facebook ‘‘ad library report’’ – a voluntary Facebookbuilt tool that political parties can join to make their ad spending on the platform more transparent.
The tool lets the public see who Facebook ads are being targeted at, how much money is being spent on them, how many people are viewing them, and includes an archive of older ads.
It was created during the fallout from the 2016 United States presidential election, in which Facebook political ads were used by Russian agents as part of an election-interference strategy.
Facebook has made the tool mandatory in other countries, but not New Zealand, because it has not yet decided if our election is crucial enough to require it.
The Greens signed up to the tool voluntarily after being asked about it by Stuff, saying it wanted to encourage transparency in the controversial space. ‘‘We believe in a strong democracy where people can see where information is coming from, who is paying for it, and how it’s being used,’’ communications director Pete Huggins said.
The public can now view an archive of the party’s Facebook and Instagram ads since signing up, the amount spent on each ad, and figures on who saw them.
When Stuff asked Jacinda Ardern about the tool in August she said it was an ‘‘interesting idea’’ and that Labour wanted to encourage transparency. ‘‘I think it’s a really interesting idea. We’re just looking at how it interfaces with our current transparency rules,’’ Ardern said.
She has made increasing the transparency of social media companies a key plank of her Christchurch Call pledge to crack down on online extremism.
But Labour Party general secretary Andre Anderson told Stuff yesterday that the party wouldn’t sign up unless the National Party did too. ‘‘The level of information disclosed is quite a powerful tool for our opponents. We are wary of doing it if we were the only ones doing it,’’ Anderson said.
He said it was ‘‘helpful’’ that the Greens had, but the party was most concerned about National.
‘‘We’re open to it, subject to who else is doing it.’’
The National Party told Stuff three times during the past two months that it was considering signing up to the tool.
In August, a NZ First Party spokeswoman said the party had yet to consider the matter. It has been asked for further comment.
Facebook said in August it was still deciding whether to make the tool mandatory in New Zealand. ‘‘We’re consistently rolling out enforcement to more countries around the world ahead
of their elections. We started with countries that had near-term elections (US, Brazil, Ukraine), could have elections at any time (UK), or have a large election (India, European Union),’’ a Facebook spokesman told Stuff.
‘‘When determining what level of elections protections to provide to each country, we consider a number of factors such as election schedules . . . input from third party organisations, the risk of foreign interference or use of divisive or politicised content in paid speech.’’
Facebook ads are under increasing scrutiny as the platform has swallowed more of the global advertising pie and the company has made clear it will not stop false or misleading ads.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said yesterday that Twitter would ban future political ads as it believed ‘‘political message reach should be earned, not bought’’.
Facebook has a much larger share of the advertising market for politicians, allowing cheap micro-targeting at sectors of the community that might not easily be reached by traditional mass media advertising.
Even with the election roughly a year away, both Labour and National typically run many ads on the platform every week, and advertising on the platform has been widely seen as crucial to both the Liberal victory in Australia in May and the Brexit referendum result in the UK in 2016.
‘‘The level of information disclosed is quite a powerful tool for our opponents.’’
Labour Party general secretary Andre Anderson