Can you trust the political adverts you see on Facebook? How this will effect the upcoming general election.

With around a month until the general election political advertisements are out in full force. With social media now being a prominent feature in everyday life, this is a main channel in which parties focus their marketing campaigns. Although this may seem a great way to help voters understand each parties agenda, it is not ensured to work that way and Facebook could raise a lot of controversy in the ads it posts.

So, why can’t we trust Facebook?

Facebook has been under fire recently after being exposed about the advertisements it posts. There is no system in place to ensure if a statement is true or not and as long as the publisher pays the advertisement fee, Facebook will post it.

For instance, if the Conservative party were to submit an advertising campaign to be shown to users whose geographical locations are in places in which Labour tend to gain seats, they could state that the general election was on the 13th of December (When it is infact the 12th). There is currently no system in place to stop this and it could have a devastating effect on voters as they would turn up a day after the actual vote deeming theirs useless.

This is not just a potential problem, this is actually happening

In Sri Lanka there has already been advertisements from parties with statements that have already been proven false, yet still published by Facebook. It seems at the minute that profits mean more than protecting the consumer. As well as this, a fake page posing as US President Donald Trump was allowed to run political advertisements despite having no relation to him. The lack of regulations are something that need addressing as soon as possible before more are effected.

What is being done to prevent this?

Twitter have already stated that they will not be allowing any political advertisements, this is one way to prevent misinformation being spread however Facebook have not taken this approach. Facebook have instead decided to implement more tools to review and monitor the posts before they are published, but this can not always be 100% accurate. No matter who you will be voting for ensure you know the date to vote is the 12th December 2019 and only use trusted publishers when wanting to find out more about the election.