People’s Vote accused of flouting rules on Facebook advertising

THE People’s Vote campaign group has been bending Facebook’s new rules on political advertising, it has been claimed.

A formal complaint has been lodged, with Facebook accusing the group campaigning for a second referendum of “bypassing” the new transparency measures by declaring itself as a “community group” rather than a political organisation.

They claim this means it does not have to pay for disclaimers on any of its advertising on the social media site, unlike pro-brexit groups.

Leave Means Leave campaigners have also accused Facebook of an “asymmetric” implementation of its transparency policy which it claims has clamped down disproportionately on Right-wing groups.

Facebook is in the process of implementing a new policy which means that all political adverts will have to carry a “paid for” disclaimer that users can click on to find out how much it cost and the demographic breakdown of the audience who saw it.

John Longworth, co-chairman of Leave Means Leave, said: “We are complying with the rules as we have not been able to run advertisements until we complied with this policy change.

“We now have the ‘paid for’ disclaimer but due to the fact that the opposition campaign, People’s Vote, have declared themselves as a ‘community’ rather than having a political tag, this has allowed them to bypass the entire system, negating the transparency measures that have been implemented for issues of national importance.”

The People’s Vote is a campaign by Open Britain, the anti-brexit group founded by multimillionaire PR chief Roland Rudd.

George Soros, the pro-eu businessman, has also given money to the People’s Vote campaign which last Saturday organised a march involving an estimated 700,000 supporters.

A spokesman for the People’s Vote, which has over 559,000 followers, said its designation as a community was “irrelevant” to its requirement to comply with the “paid for” disclaimer.

“This has been confirmed to us by Facebook,” he said. “The new policy of the ‘paid for’ disclaimer on political advertisements on Facebook does not begin until Nov 7.

“We are going through the full verification procedure and will be fully compliant with the new policy when it comes into force.”