Facebook: we would let Tories run 'doctored' Starmer video as ad
Alex Hern and Jim Waterson
Updated
Social media platforms do have a role to play, but real change requires political parties to take responsibility. Lisa-Maria Neudert and Phil Howard are on the Oxford Technology and Elections Commission. Social media platforms wanting to help curb political disinformation on their sites are offering new ways to avoid it online. Twitter has discontinued all political ads and Facebook has new tools for content moderation. This is a good start, even if not all platforms are showing initiative, and not all such attempts are fruitful. However, electioneering and political campaigning don’t start with technology firms. They start with the political parties and their affinity groups. To keep our elections free and fair, and to be confident in their outcomes, parties need to disclose what ads they’re buying, on which platforms, and at what price. Now is the chance for campaigns to demonstrate their commitment to transparency and accountability. Over the past few months, Oxford University’s Technology and Elections Commission (of which we are a part) has been investigating the range of ways that political parties, social media platforms and election officials need to collaborate to make sure the next UK election is a fair fight, without outside interference. There are lots of regulatory gaps, and social media platforms and data brokers have much to answer for. However, the customers buying the misleading ads and launching problematic campaigns are usually political parties and campaign managers. In preparing for 12 December, political campaigners in the UK are relying heavily on data-driven targeted advertising, but share little information about their content, placement and pricing. After 10 months of research and consultation with policymakers, the tech industry, security experts and academia, our central recommendation is that advertising transparency must start with political parties. Digital political advertising differs from traditional campaigns in print or broadcasting. The advertising that is shown on mobile phones and laptops is called up by data based on individual behaviour, targeted at small groups within the population. We can’t be confident that our neighbours are getting the same content as us, and we already know these techniques are used to discriminate or send conflicting messages to different audiences. And while data-driven advertising and content marketing have mushroomed into a multibillion-dollar industry, it is political parties and their affinity groups that are pouring money into this industry. Campaigners in the UK use their budget to place content on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube, on voter files offered by data brokers, and on data analytics software. Transparency rules that were once designed for analogue campaigns have been rendered obsolete in the digital age. Right now, digital campaign spending is reported in ways that do not reveal information about where advertising was placed or how much it cost. A legal requirement for imprints (indicating who is responsible for content) on campaign material does not extend to online ads. Advertisers can therefore withhold their identity for political purposes. Democratic citizenship demands that voters have access to meaningful information on campaign spending, and on who is behind the sponsored messages. Dubious campaign messages and junk news have circulated online during critical moments of democratic life in the United Kingdom. For the general election in December, we need to watch out for unorthodox campaigning in the political mainstream. Cambridge Analytica may be out of business, but there is no shortage of digital campaign experts with questionable track records. Unfortunately, transparency efforts by technology firms are wildly inconsistent. Twitter has just banned political advertising altogether, but that raises questions about what exactly the platform will consider to be political. Researchers have concluded that Facebook’s ad library (which includes some limited information about targeting and spending) is inadequate for meaningful analysis, and the company has already said it will not fact-check political ads. It is not primarily classic “paid ads” that are the problem, but other forms of sponsored content and messages that spread organically. Social media companies should be archiving all ads all the time. If political parties are spending money on different platforms, in a variety of formats, they should also archive the ads they buy. Parties should also report clear information about the sources of the data they acquire, to ensure full transparency of its provenance. This should include data from the electoral register, third parties and data brokers, open data, and their own sources of data. They should disclose what profiling tools and analytics software they use to process data and infer personal information. This will help to increase transparency, advance the creation of accountable codes of practice, and help to protect electoral integrity and people’s data. Down the road, there are a range of regulatory reforms we could consider. There is a strong, existing framework for the lawful uses of data for political campaigning and democratic engagement (in the form of GDPR, the Data Protection Act 1998, abd the EU’s Privacy and Electronic Communications directive). But practice shows that campaigners struggle with attesting to the integrity of third-party data and external analytics software. The Information Commissioner’s Office has identified this gap, and a guide to the use of personal data for political campaigning is in development. But with election day rapidly approaching, the immediate task is to get political parties to be transparent about their communications. Because data has become deeply entrenched in campaigning, we need rules for its use that go beyond just protecting our political systems, and actually strengthen democracy. Elections are perhaps the most fundamental exercise of democracy. The tech industry has taken a few steps in the right direction, but the UK’s political parties need to lead the way. . Lisa-Maria Neudert is a doctoral researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute, and secretary to OxTEC. Phil Howard is director of the Oxford Internet Institute and OxTEC commissioner
Facebook would allow the Conservative party to promote its “doctored” video of Keir Starmer as a paid-for advert during the election campaign, the social network has confirmed. But the company has announced a policy aimed at cracking down on pages that conceal their ownership in order to mislead users.
The executive Rebecca Stimson said the public debate that followed the airing of footage of the senior Labour MP in an ITV interview justified the company’s policy of allowing political misinformation on the site.
“You can see, in the UK, what that has meant is that what the Conservatives put in that ad has been the subject of ferocious political debate and discussion, as a result of our policies,” said Stimson, the company’s head of UK public policy.
In the controversial video, posted to Twitter on Tuesday, footage of an interview between Starmer and Piers Morgan was edited in a way that suggested the shadow Brexit secretary was lost for words when asked about the party’s Brexit policy.
The Conservative party maintains that the video was edited not to try to misinform people, but to shorten the clip for social sharing. Morgan himself accused the Conservatives, of having “doctored” the video; a charge denied by the party chairman, James Cleverly.
Facebook’s approach to political advertising suggests the company is unlikely to heed calls from civil society groups to pause political adverts in the run-up to the election.
Stimson said: “Political advertising on Facebook and Instagram is now more transparent than other forms of election campaigning, whether that’s billboards, newspaper ads, direct mail, leaflets or targeted emails.
“We believe it’s important that candidates and politicians can communicate with their constituents and would-be constituents. Online political ads are also important for both new challengers and campaigning groups to get their message out. Our approach is therefore to make political messages on our platforms as transparent as possible, not to remove them altogether.”
On misinformation, Stimson argued: “In general, we believe political speech should be heard and we don’t feel it is right for private companies like us to fact-check or judge the veracity of what politicians and political parties say. In our country it’s always been up to the media and the voters to scrutinise what politicians say and make their own minds up.”
Facebook said a policy aimed at cracking down on pages that conceal their ownership in order to mislead users would bring greater transparency. Its head of security policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, said: “If we find that a page is doing this, we require it to show more information on the page itself about who is behind it, including the organisation’s legal name, and the city it’s set up in.”
The rules appear to finally close a loophole uncovered by the Guardian earlier this year that allowed a lobbying firm owned by the political strategist Lynton Crosby to freely run a widespread propaganda campaign on the social network. CTF Partners, Crosby’s firm, which has worked for Conservative campaigns, owned and ran Facebook pages that purported to be independent news sources on topics ranging from Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to bike lanes in London.
The company then used them to push content created by CTF employees that aimed to promote a particular viewpoint. At times, CTF would build pages that appeared to take opposing sides of the same campaign, in order to more effectively manipulate public sentiment.
Facebook had initially argued that, since the CTF employees were not using fake accounts, the operation did not meet the company’s definition of coordinated inauthentic behaviour, even if users had no way of discovering the lobbying firm’s involvement.
In a similar campaign, operated by Daily Wire, the rightwing US news site ran 14 large Facebook pages anonymously, according to a report by Popular Information. The pages, which disclosed no link to the publisher, funnelled millions of engagements back to Daily Wire content.
Under Facebook’s new policy, however, both Daily Wire and CTF Partners could be required to have their legal names displayed in their pages’ information boxes, possibly preventing the worst abuses.
Amanda Holden, 53, looked sensational as she showed off her latest outfit to host Heart FM despite "not being able to find a top" as she opted for just a bra and jacket
The arrival of the US M1A1 Abrams tanks in Ukraine was hailed as a turning point in the war. Coming in at roughly $10 million a unit, the Nato stalwart was supposed to provide the armoured fist that would punch through the Russian lines. But tactics evolve quickly in warfare, and Russia’s use of surveillance and hunter-killer drones has led to heavy casualties for Ukraine’s tank fleets. This is alarming for NATO. If Russia has found critical vulnerabilities in our armour, our borders are beginni
The moment was filmed by a Pollok resident who was left disgusted after spotting the vermin from her kitchen window in the Templeland Road area of Glasgow.
Following the latest Channel tragedy on Tuesday when five people, including a seven-year-old girl, died, one local French mayor squarely blamed Britain.
Leo Varadkar left his job as Irish prime minister last month with compliments being lavished on him from all directions — especially the White House — for his triumph over Brexit Britain in forcing the retention of an open land border on Northern Ireland.
Prince William made a surprise visit to a school in the West Midlands today, where he issued a 14-word update on his wife, Kate Middleton, amid her cancer treatment
Vida was treated by vets for lacerations which saw its coat soaked in blood but Quaker was in an equine hospital with its future "not looking good", sources said
A man gave his dying dog a chocolate bar – a treat dogs love but that is toxic to them – as a final gesture of love before she was put to sleep on April 23.Footage recorded by Miller Hurtado Toro shows his dog Sharon enjoying the tasty sweet before she was injected with euthanizing drugsToro told Storyful that Sharon was 12 years old and had been fighting the tick-borne canine disease ehrlichiosis for two years.“We tried to take her to find more treatments, but they saw that she had lung cancer, with metastases in her lungs and liver that were making her weak from just lying down,” Toro said.“The day before yesterday, she could not get up again, and that is when I made the decision,” he explained.Toro said he had often denied Sharon a taste of chocolate as the candy is notably bad for dogs’ health, but that he thought she should try it as her final treat.“No dog should leave without first trying chocolate,” Toro said. Credit: Miller Hurtado Toro via Storyful
The lawyer who negotiated Stormy Daniels’ hush money deal told a tabloid editor who helped Donald Trump kill stories of alleged affairs “he f----d you, idiot”.
Yahoo Finance 
