{"id":47658,"date":"2019-10-23T02:36:28","date_gmt":"2019-10-23T00:36:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/?p=47658"},"modified":"2019-10-23T02:36:40","modified_gmt":"2019-10-23T00:36:40","slug":"uk-lawmaker-questions-facebook-on-its-move-to-allow-misinformation-in-political-ads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/2019\/10\/uk-lawmaker-questions-facebook-on-its-move-to-allow-misinformation-in-political-ads\/","title":{"rendered":"UK lawmaker questions Facebook on its move to allow misinformation in political ads"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A UK lawmaker is challenging Facebook on its decision to exclude political ads from its fact-checking requirements, effectively allowing politicians to lie in Facebook ads, according to The Guardian<\/em><\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The House of Commons\u2019 media committee chair, Damian Collins, pressed Facebook vice president and former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg over the company’s policy change, dropping a ban on \u201cdeceptive, false or misleading content\u201d in political ads. He warned of the risks it could create for a UK general election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Collins asked in the letter:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhy was the decision taken to change Facebook\u2019s policy, given the heavy constraint this will place on Facebook\u2019s ability to combat online disinformation in the run-up to elections around the world, and a possible UK general election in particular?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Monday, Facebook announced the removal<\/a> of several networks of misinformation accounts based in Russia and Iran, that were working to disrupt elections in the US and elsewhere. The company promised other steps to prevent election interference, including labeling state-owned media sources, fact-checking, and investments to promote media literacy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Facebook Vice President Richard Allan also published plans Monday to safeguard the next general election in the UK, including a \u201cdedicated operations center\u201d to monitor interference, according to AP News<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But writing in The Telegraph<\/em><\/a>, Allan also said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe do not believe it should be our role to fact check or judge the veracity of what politicians say \u2013 not least since political speech is heavily scrutinized by the media and our democratic processes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Facebook will label ads with claims debunked by third-party fact-checkers, often small nonprofits that have already struggled to keep up with the influx of content, focusing only on the most widely shared items. Now, the platform has\u00a0created a specific exemption<\/a>\u00a0for content such as satire, opinion, or any site \u201cwith the primary purpose of expressing the opinion or agenda of a political figure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Collins and the media committee had already been calling for swift action to protect the democratic process from the new threats that come with the digital landscape, as the scale of election interference and manipulation has been uncovered in recent years.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his letter<\/a>, Collins also inquired about claims from the company\u2019s former elections integrity chief that Facebook senior management ignored suggestions to restrict misinformation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI also note that Facebook\u2019s former head of global elections integrity ops, Yael Eisenstat, has described that when she advocated for the scanning of adverts to detect misinformation efforts, despite engineers\u2019 enthusiasm she faced opposition from upper management.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019s asked Facebook to explain what proposals were suggested, and exactly why those plans weren\u2019t put into practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo by Chatham House [CC BY 2.0 (https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0)]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A UK lawmaker is challenging Facebook on its decision to exclude political ads from its fact-checking requirements, effectively allowing politicians to lie in Facebook ads, according to The Guardian.  The House of Commons\u2019 media committee chair, Damian Collins, pressed Facebook vice president and former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg over the company’s policy change, dropping a ban<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":47659,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[113],"tags":[10267,140,4485],"class_list":["post-47658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-finance","tag-disinformation","tag-facebook","tag-facebook-ads"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}