How Facebook lets you break Australian electoral laws in under 15 minutes
You’ve heard it all before, right?
An evil person in a faraway place is using the Facebook Advertising platform to show you lies.
If you’re anything like me, you probably believed that you were immune to this fake news epidemic. Or maybe you believed that Facebook would actually prevent you from seeing ads that directly broke the law?
Well, we put it to the test, and it turns out that they don’t.
For under fifty dollars, with no authorisation, and with no verification of our identity we were able to place ads that broke Australian electoral law.
Designing the ads
We were pretty sure that Facebook would approve all sorts of dodgy content for their platform.
But to prove our point, we wanted to specifically design ads that breached Australian electoral law (or at least landed solidly in the grey area between legal and illegal).
First up, encouraging young people to disobey their legal requirement to enrol to vote (see figure 1). Since 1911 Australians have been legally required to enrol to vote, but Facebook will still approve content designed to encourage otherwise. Ads like this could be deployed by anybody to undermine faith in our democratic process.
And secondly, imitating official electoral information in an attempt to suppress voter turnout (see figure 2). Following complaints in the 2016 federal election, the federal government outlawed advertising that “[misleads or deceives] an elector in relation to casting of a vote”. So that’s exactly what we did with this second ad.
Placing up the ads
It was actually pretty simple and if you are familiar with the Facebook Advertising platform you will know this process very well.
We created a new page, linked it to a new ad account, updated our credit card details, created the ad and in less than 15 minutes we had submitted our ads for approval.
Only twice were we stopped by Facebook.
First, when we created the page they asked us for a business address. Obviously, a fake news page didn’t have a physical business address. So we switched the page type to “just for fun” and Facebook no longer required this information.
Then, when we started using our ad account for the first time, Facebook asked whether or not we were running ads that contained political messaging. We were, but we clicked no. Instantly, Facebook allowed us to start running our ads.
There was one small problem left before we hit publish. Who would we show these ads to? On our mission to demonstrate what kinds of content Facebook would approve, we were conscious of the fact that these ads could cause actual harm to our democracy.
So before we started we recruited one hundred people to consent to the campaign, showing them the ads we would be attempting to deliver to them and explaining how they were incorrect.
We then uploaded their personal information to the Facebook custom audience and used them for the audience of our campaign.
Twenty-four hours later, our ads had been approved and were being delivered by Facebook. A month later, and trying to get the ads taken down by reporting them when we started seeing them, they are still running.
What needs to be done?
We often hear of the dangers that online digital platforms like Facebook pose to our democracy. But rarely are we able to get an insight into what kinds of specific advertising can get through the Facebook approvals process.
When there is an inconsistency between what Facebook will allow, and what our national law requires, it should be the responsibility of Facebook to reject this content from its platform.
There needs to be greater transparency of political advertising on social media so we know who is targeting us, using what personal information, and for what purpose.
And the government needs to step up, and take action to prevent the harms that advertisers can cause to individuals, society and the democratic process in Australia, through the use of these digital platforms.
Responsible Technology Australia is advocating for the ethical progression of technology for a safer, fairer, and more democratic Australia. If you’re keen to hear more, get in touch via hello@responsibletechnology.org.au
