Facebook can’t stop election adverts getting round rules

FACEBOOK has admitted it is unable to track all political adverts on its platforms as the company faces continued pressure to ban them entirely.

Within days of the general election campaign getting under way, a number of posts have been targeted at users despite clearly failing to comply with the social network’s own rules on political advertising.

In a conference call with journalists, Facebook said it was better prepared than ever for dealing with misinformation and had set up a special operations centre where staff would work to combat the misuse of the platform.

However, asked by the PA news agency what Facebook was doing to stop political advertisers getting round its rules, Rob Leathern, director of product management for its business integrity team, said the firm still relied on users to flag things it had missed.

“It’s important to realise we are not going to be perfect, we are continually improving as we track this across global elections,” he said. “We do rely on people to provide feedback about how we can improve those systems.”

One advert taken down in recent days was published by a page called the

Fair Tax Campaign, a lobbying group run by Alex Crowley, a former Boris Johnson aide. The sponsored advert asked: “Could you afford an extra £214 each month? That’s what Labour’s tax plans would mean for everyone.”

The ad was taken down after the page failed to label it is political, which would have required it to display who paid to have it promoted in users’ feeds.

Nathaniel Gleicher, head of cybersecurity policy, added: “We know we are

‘If we had seen co-ordinated inauthentic behaviour targeting the UK, you would know about it’

not going to catch everything. That has to be part of the strategy. And transparency means even the ones that we do miss, we can be held accountable.”

Senior figures at the social network also said they were yet to find evidence of any widespread foreign operations aimed at disrupting the election.

Mr Gleicher said: “If we had seen co-ordinated inauthentic behaviour targeting the UK, you would know about it.”