Facebook pulls ‘political’ adverts by Trump’s firms
●Turnberry ads culled in error as social network investigates 114 others
Facebook has removed more than 100 adverts for Donald Trump’s hotels and golf courses after ruling they had breached strict new transparency rules surrounding political advertising and failed to disclose who had paid for the promotions, The Scotsman can reveal.
More than a dozen firms owned by the US president have had adverts pulled after Facebook’s machine learning model deemed them to be “related to politics and issues of national importance” and were not just promoting Trump’s commercial interests. The ads taken down include several posted by Trump Turnberry, the first of which was launched last July, the same month the 72-year-old spent a weekend at the South Ayrshire resort playing golf.
In all, some 117 adverts for 13 Trump Organisation companies were adjudged to have fallen foul of the new rules, which were introduced last year amid growing criticism of the spread of misinformation and state-sponsored interference on the social network.
After being presented by The Scotsman with a list of the pulled adverts,
Facebook launched an investigation. It found the three Turnberry promotions had been erroneously flagged as political. The company is continuing to look into how the rest of the adverts came to be removed.
The Trump Organisation has been contacted by The Scotsman for comment.
While questions have been asked in the past about the effectiveness of Facebook’s artificial intelligence detection system, the removal of the adverts for Trump’s companies represents the most embarrassing blow yet to its attempts to bring transparency to political advertising.
The mistake will also provide ammunition for those on the right who regard the world’s biggest social network as a malign influence.
Only last month, Trump himself railed against Facebook in an unsubstantiated broadside on Twitter, accusing it of “bias”.
On Tuesday, meanwhile, Trump’s eldest son, Donald Jr, executive vice-president of the Trump Organisation, claimed Facebook and other social networks were trying to “systematically stifle the viewpoints held by half the country”.
It comes amid speculation the Trump administration could move to impose regulations on Facebook and other social media platforms.
Facebook says all its adverts are scrutinised through a combination of artificial intelligence and human reviewers, and that its machine learning model will improve with every advert it reviews.
It is also adding 3,000 human reviewers.
Facebook’s analytics show the Trump adverts, which ran in countries including the UK and US, garnered up to 823,000 impressions before their removal.
Although the purge began last June, some were visible as recently as last month.
According to its Ad Archive, an online repository of live and expired political advertising on the platform, Facebook ruled the adverts had gone live without a “paid for by” disclaimer label showing who had bankrolled them.
It added that after each advert went live, “we determined that the ad was related to politics and issues of national importance and required the label. The ad was taken down”.
Under Facebook’s tightened rules, introduced last May in the US followed by the UK in November, it distinguishes political adverts as those which are “made by, on behalf of, or about a current or former candidate for public office, a political party, a political action committee, or advocates for the outcome of an election to public office”.
In the UK, three adverts for Trump Turnberry were among those removed.
The ads, which promoted a special rate at the resort, ran between 30 July and 30 September.
A day after The Scotsman contacted Facebook enquiring about the pulled ads, the details had been removed from its Ad Archive.
However, the vast majority of the flagged adverts remain in the archive at the time of writing.
According to Facebook’s data, the three adverts cost a maximum of £233 and received as many as 12,000 impressions from the social media firm’s users across the UK, Ireland, the US, Canada and further afield.
The Turnberry page has more than 21,000 followers.
The Trump Store was also adjudged to have broken the rules with two adverts it ran less than a fortnight after the president’s visit to Turnberry last year.
The ads, visible on Facebook between 25 July and 30 July, promoted Turnberry-brand- ed baseball caps and polo shirts. The online retail arm of Trump’s companies had 20 ads pulled in total.
The vast majority of the adverts taken down promoted Trump’s US businesses, with one resort – Trump National Golf Club Hudson Valley innewyork–seeing28ofits adverts shut down.
While Facebook’s platform was a key driver in Trump’s 2016 election win, thanks in no small part to the misuse of its data by Cambridge Analytica and Russian-bought ads, the scale of the Facebook advertising spend by Trump’s businesses is a mere fraction of that by his political campaign.
Data gathered by Facebook indicates the upper spend level on the pulled ads stands at £11,504. By contrast, the same source shows that the Trump Make America Great Again Committee and Donald J Trump for President Inc have spent more than £7.01m on ads since May 2018.
Last November, Facebook removed an antiimmigration advert widely condemned as racist, reasoning that it violated its policy against “sensational content”. It was paid for by Donald J Trump for President Inc.
COMMENT
Donald Jr claimed Facebook and other social networks were trying to “systematically stifle the viewpoints held by half the country”
DONALD TRUMP JR