Facebook's transparency efforts have failed in Ukraine so far

Facebook's efforts to remove disinformation in the wake of the 2019 Ukrainian Presidential election have so far failed. Politico reports that "Among the Facebook pages that spread spurious claims during the election was one with more than 100,000 followers that ran a video claiming (the Presidential candidate) Zelenskiy will allow Russia to take over the country with a violent military operation. Others portrayed him as a drug addict, or Poroshenko (the other Presidential candidate) as an alcoholic. One Facebook page posted a digitally edited picture of a Ukrainian rock star holding an anti-Poroshenko sign, when the musician had in fact been denouncing Zelenskiy." One major underlying problem is that users were unable to see who funded or edited the pages. Politico reports that while Facebook introduced regulatory efforts to increase ads transparency, they came too late - two weeks prior to election day - and were slowly enforced and routinely violated.

https://www.politico.eu/article/facebook-regulation-fail-ukraine-should-worry-europe/

15 May 2019

Nina Jankowicz

Politico Europe