VICE: Facebook Allowed Us To Buy Hoax Political Ads “Paid For By ISIS”

BAILEY T. STEEN | FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2018

Facebook, the endlessly controversial social media empire, prides itself on “building systems to keep the unwanted, inauthentic stuff” off their platform. Last year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg championed his “democratic values” by issuing reassuring comments the platform would make the process of buying political advertisements “more transparent”, citing the indicted Russian trolls who used their Facebook meme pages to somehow influence the 2016 presidential election. In a new test conducted by VICE News, however, their campaign ad system is reportedly more broken than ever.

Since May, Facebook has introduced a new mandatory label where all political ads must disclose who a particular Facebook post was “paid for by”, releasing a public statement that declared this transparency in campaign funding to be an “issue of national importance.” This is in addition to their announcement last year to create a database of advertisements readily available for researchers, journalists, and the public around the world.

On the eve of the 2018 mid-term elections, the company said their goal was to unveil the “dark money ties” of political campaign finance and show their platform is the truly home of “keeping it real”…