Facebook even tracks you on other websites, warns data boss
Company chief criticised over plans to fight referendum ‘fake news’
FACEBOOK has promised to roll out new ‘transparency tools’ in time for the abortion referendum.
However, the measures were met with criticism at Leinster House yesterday as they will not reveal who funds the ads.
While the new tools will allow users concerned about an ad to see what other material that advertiser is running at that time, they won’t reveal who is paying for the ad, or what material the advertiser has promoted in the past.
Facebook’s vice-president of public policy, Joel Kaplan, appeared before the Oireachtas communications committee yesterday, where he apologised for Facebook’s role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
He promised the company would roll out new tools.
‘We are working hard to build out these transparency tools and roll them out globally but it takes time to do this. From April 25 we will add Ireland to our pilot programme,’ Mr Kaplan said.
Ireland will become only the second country in the world where the tools are used, after Canada.
A new taskforce will also be established to fight the spread of fake accounts during the abortion referendum, which were also used during recent campaigns in France, Germany and Alabama.
Mr Kaplan, a former deputy chief of staff to George W Bush, said the taskforce would use artificial intelligence to identify and remove fake accounts, which are often used in the spread of fake news, before they can even post to Facebook.
The company will double the number of staff working in safety and security from 10,000 to 20,000 this year. Niamh Sweeney, head of public policy at Facebook Ireland, acknowledged the tools wouldn’t address all concerns. She said: ‘There’s a number of issues that need to be addressed when it comes to political transparency.
‘If an ad is being run, you can click on it and see all the ads that that particular advertiser is running at that moment in your jurisdiction. What that is supposed to address is this issue of microtargeting, also called dark ads.’
Mr Kaplan said Facebook accepted the public’s concerns about how the site was being used to try to manipulate votes, adding the company ‘learned a lot as a result of the 2016 US elections and Brexit’. But he came in for criticism after admitting the ‘transparency tools’ would not address the key concern of where funding for political advertising was coming from, and would not be unveiled straight away.
‘I was extremely disappointed to hear that those who purchase the ads will not be revealed, because we’re not talking about content, we’re talking commercial activity,’ Independent senator Alice Mary Higgins said.
‘You are accepting payments. Commercial activity is taking place, ads are being sold now. And we know that in the US, five million ads over a six week stretch for example, over half the advertisers were not registered anywhere apart from online.
Mr Kaplan said: ‘I can certainly understand the frustration and the desire to push these out as quickly as possible. We’d do it tomorrow if we could.’
Facebook is seeking to win back the trust of its billions of its users after Cambridge Analytica was involved in a dispute over the use of personal Facebook data and whether it was used to sway the outcome of the US presidential election and Brexit referendum.
Mr Kaplan yesterday apologised for having breached users’ trust, including the estimated 45,000 Irish accounts affected by the scandal. He said: ‘We are going back and looking at all of the apps similarly situated. If they have misused their data we will tell the people affected.’
‘Learned a lot from US elections’