SNP PAID FACEBOOK £100,000 TO TARGET VOTERS
New privacy scandal as media giant says sorry for data breach
THE SNP last night was embroiled in a new Facebook privacy row – after paying the social media giant to snoop on the personal profiles of Tory and Labour voters.
During the ongoing row about Facebook selling the data of millions of users to private firm Cambridge Analytica, the SNP has been highly critical of the site, with one of the party’s MPs branding it an ‘unregulated wild west’. But on the
day the site’s founder Mark Zuckerberg issues a grovelling public apology in a series of newspaper adverts, The Scottish Mail on Sunday can now reveal the SNP paid Facebook to identify supporters of rival parties, then bombard them with Nationalist propaganda.
Analysis of SNP invoices shows that, between the final weeks of the 2014 independence referendum and last year’s General Election, the party made dozens of payments to Facebook totalling almost £100,000 in return for adverts, which used data harvested from users’ personal profiles to target them with campaign material.
Although Facebook is routinely used by all political parties as a platform for campaigning, the SNP went further by paying the site to use ‘data-points’ to identify supporters of political opponents.
And although the SNP did not directly buy access to Facebook users’ data – as is alleged in the ongoing scandal surrounding the Cambridge Analytica company – critics said the party’s actions were hypocritical.
Our revelations come as the UK’s data watchdog is investigating if such adverts are potentially illegal and breach data protection laws.
Ahead of last year’s General Election, Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham wrote to every party, warning that such tactics were ‘extremely annoying’ for the public and potentially unlawful.
The SNP has repeatedly condemned Facebook for allegedly sharing personal details with Cambridge Analytica.
Last week, Nationalist MP Brendan O’Hara demanded that Mr Zuckerberg, Facebook’s notoriously secretive CEO, should appear before the Digital, Media, Culture and Sport Committee on which he sits.
‘What we have at the moment is an unregulated wild west where data is harvested and used by, I would argue, some pretty sinister forces,’ Mr O’Hara said.
In a newspaper article yesterday, Nationalist MP Mhairi Black also hit out at the use of data in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, saying it was ‘utterly terrifying’ that the company had been able to take information from Facebook ‘to tailor propaganda and fake news to appeal to you and sway your opinion’.
She added: ‘We must recognise that this is corruption at the highest level. This completely undermines and destroys quality democracy.’
But new figures from the Electoral Commission show the SNP is actually a frequent Facebook customer and has paid it £93,250 over the past three-and-a-half years.
Among dozens of invoices is one dated June 6, 2017, showing the party paid the social media company £483.93 for items including ‘48,267 impressions’ made on the pages of ‘Labour voters’ and ‘33,162 impressions’ made on ‘Tories’.
The SNP also paid for Labour and Lib Dem voters to be targeted on Instagram – bought by Facebook for £700 million in 2012.
The party has also used people’s personal data to aim adverts at different age groups, or people living in constituencies where it was hoping to get candidates elected.
Nationalist MPs Alan Brown and Joanna Cherry benefited from adverts placed on Facebook or Instagram, although the adverts were also used in losing campaigns on behalf of Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, Callum McCaig and Kirsten Oswald.
The Electoral Commission figures do not show spending on Facebook by Scottish Labour, Scottish Tories or Scottish Lib Dems – although receipts for Scottish adverts could have been filed by the UK parties, which do admit to using the site.
But the SNP’s use of Facebook seems more sophisticated than Scottish rivals. Targeting people with opposing views such as supporters of other parties was expressly criticised by Ms Denham in letters to all political parties in May.
She warned: ‘The complaints we have received reveal that individuals find unwanted direct marketing, and unwanted contact from political parties in particular, to be extremely annoying.’
The Information Commissioner’s Office is concerned that Facebook users are not given the opportunity to consent to being bombarded by ‘dark ads’.
Democracy campaigner Alexandra Runswick, director of Unlock Democracy, said: ‘Political parties need to get a grip and walk the walk, not just talk the talk, otherwise it’s just a matter of time before another scandal erupts.’
Last night an SNP spokesman responded: ‘The SNP’s social media success is powered by our mass membership, which means our Facebook spending is tiny compared to other political parties.
‘We share the concerns of the Information Commissioner and want to see everyone operating within the law.’ A Facebook spokesman pointed to a statement issued in October, stating: ‘We’re going to make advertising more transparent, and not just for political ads.’
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has taken out full-page adverts on the back of national newspapers today, including The Mail on Sunday, to apologise for the ‘breach of trust’ which allowed the data of 50 million account-holders to be used for political purposes without their knowledge. ‘We have a responsibility to protect your information. If we can’t, we don’t deserve it,’ he wrote in a bid to restore faith in his company as its share price plunged 14 per cent in a week.
‘Political parties need to get a grip’