Ref. Ares(2021)6483363 - 21/10/2021
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technical y a political ad from f.ex.
Germany can only run in Germany; Once an ad is established as political then targeting is
limited. There is a strict rule regarding being locatable in the country in which you wish to
circulate an ad (FCB pings the location). FCB explains that the location requirement is based
on the desire to limit foreign interference.
- There is a
why I am seeing this ad which explains why a given ad was
targeted to them; users can also choose their ad preferences or opt to see fewer political
ads;
- Ad library is the most comprehensive searchable database of ads which were run on FCB, it
contains option of seeing additional details about the ad, when the ad was created etc; al
disclaimer information about the ads are being held as wel . Ad library includes al active ads.
Political ads provide information about sponsor, amounts spent, impressions, some
demographics and location of circulation (no specifics about targeting);
- Regarding targeting, FCB explained that one cannot target specifical y audience of a given
page but can target persons with certain interest. Look alike audiences can be used.
- The audience of the ads is chosen by Facebook based on the users previous behaviour
(previous engagement, whether the used clicked or got involved with the video etc.)
- In the EU the users can agree (or not) whether they want their political or religious views to
be shared with the advertisers (in line with GDPR); there is a general obligation to express
consent (for EU users) to use data for ad purposes, also when seeing the ad users are
informed why they saw that ad and that they can remove yourself from the list;
- Advertisers can also bring their own data for targeting purposes. In that case, FCB just
requires that the advertiser indicate that necessary consents have been obtained;
- The per user auction is then based on the trigger characteristics, then bid x action rate x ad
quality (based on machine learning).
- FCB informed that
month in the EU.
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desired way (click, watch vid, buy something etc), as specified by the advertiser. FB col ects
data about the political views of its users, including from what they post on their profiles,
which FB col ects on the basis of consent, and which FB does not share with advertiser, again
with consent.
- FCB spoke also about lessons learned from past elections. FCB sees more and more
influence operations across the world which are being detected, this is why they are working
with local partners on the ground (f.ex. for German elections with federal agency for
cybersecurity);
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emove, reduce and inform ; there is a network of 80
independent fact-checkers helping FCB identifying what is misleading or false, there is also a
function on FCB label ing content as false and preventing from sharing it;
- In paral el, FCB is connecting people to authoritative information on important issues, such
as to prompt people to vote etc. FCB spoke about its transparency policy - its users can
control how many ads they see and they can choose to see fewer ads. FCB intends to
increase ad transparency and is sensitive to the possibility of advertisers exploiting the
internal market to conduct interference activities.
- FCB is of the opinion that for Member State authorities it is difficult to monitor and enforce
extra-jurisdictional y under the current patchwork framework.
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In this vein, FCB voiced concerns that it is hard to regulate around many elections happening
in the MS at the same time and spoke about its challenges ahead of 2019 elections when,
due to its policy the EU institutions were prevented from carrying out EU wide campaigns).
FCB said that advertising across the EU is a very complex activity as currently targeting is
happening country by country. FCB said that there was need for EU wide framework
regarding political ads;
- Commenting on recent developments on DSA, FCB said they were working with the co-
legislators and expressed its preference regarding more transparency versus the limitation of
ban of microtargeting.
Contact:
(SG),
(JUST)
