Reporter Posed as Cambridge Analytica To Run Political Ads on Facebook. Facebook, To No One's Surprise, Failed To Catch That They Were Frauds. (businessinsider.com)

From a report: Facebook's new political ad transparency tools allowed Business Insider to run adverts as being "paid for" by Cambridge Analytica, the political consultancy that dragged Facebook into a major data scandal this year. The investigation demonstrates that political advertising on Facebook is still open to manipulation by bad actors, even with greater efforts at transparency. This is despite commitments from chief executive Mark Zuckerberg to solve the company's misinformation problem. Vice first reported last week that the Facebook political ads tool could be manipulated, with the publication securing approval to buy fake Facebook ads on behalf of US Vice President Mike Pence, terrorist group ISIS, and 100 US senators. Business Insider carried out a similar test, setting up false political ads that were captioned as being "paid for by Cambridge Analytica," the defunct political advertising firm which harvested Facebook data and weaponized it during the 2016 US election. Cambridge Analytica is banned from Facebook and has gone into administration.

Comments

What are you expecting?

[110010001000]

Big tech companies do not have humans monitoring anything. That would cost too much money, and they want to make everything as frictionless as possible. I'm pretty sure the "solution" they came up with was that the ads needed to be displayed with a "paid for" name on the ad. The name itself can be anything.

So what if they don't catch fraud?

[mysidia]

Facebook is not law enforcement.

This is no different from most businesses... If you place a pickup order under your neighbor's name, then go to the restraurant to pick up your order and tell them it's your neighbor's name and pay for cash; there's nothing gonna detect that you used a fake name.

If you get caught doing this, then they may cancel your order or close your account, but that's about it.

Re:So what if they don't catch fraud?

[rickb928]

"...Facebook's new political ad transparency tools..."

It would seem that Facebook developed these 'transparency tools' for a purpose. If that was to ensure greater transparency, well, they are in the business of enforcing something, just not law. If not, well, was this an exercise in avoiding criticism and responsibility?

If indeed this is an example of the impossibility of guaranteeing the identity of these advertisers, well, stop pretending and drop the pretense of having 'new political ad transparency tools'. they either have none, they are ineffective, or they are playing us. Or some combination thereof.

Re:So what if they don't catch fraud?

[mysidia]

If that was to ensure greater transparency, well, they are in the business of enforcing something, just not law.

This is not enforcement, but Transparency. Sharing the information Facebook received

The burden for actually enforcing could be very high, since Facebook could not say for sure a person
signing up for an Ad is not an agent or 3rd party company working for the named person, politician,
or entity. Also, there is the matter of free speech, and persons have every legal right to conduct business
such as authorship using an obscure, anonymous, or pseudonymous name if they want.

If someone signed up for an Ad, or someone signed up for even a Facebook account under someone else as false name,
then Facebook may have received incorrect information ---- However, the person who commits this act
willfully has violated legal agreements with Facebook, and if they used another person's identity falsely without permission to create political Ads, then they might even be guilty of crimes, And it's the relevant Law Enforcement authority's job to investigate and bring the perpetrator to justice, and Facebook doesn't have a duty to find a way of preventing that in the first place.

Re:So what if they don't catch fraud?

[AmiMoJo]

Bad example. If you are a billboard owner and you allow people to run illegal campaign ads under the name "Vladamir Putin" then you will very likely end up in court answering questions as to why you didn't question it.

Considering they signed up as Cambridge Analytica, Facebook's arch nemesis that recently cost them until millions of dollars and forced them to run an international advertising campaign trying to recover people's trust, at the very least it looks pretty bad for them.

Irony

[sacrilicious]

Reporter Posed as Cambridge Analytica To Run Political Ads on Facebook. Facebook, To No One's Surprise, Failed To Catch That They Were Frauds.

This on the heels of previous slashdot article Reporters Posed as 100 Senators To Run Ads on Facebook. Facebook Approved All of Them. Tiny bit of irony there.

Re: The problem isn't Facebook

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem isn't social media. Social media is great, allowing family and friends to keep in touch in ways not previously possible. The problem is people. People have always been the problem. The internet and social media have simply allowed both the good and bad things to be amplified. If it were never invented you'd still have people spreading lies for their own gain, stoking the fires of racism to give themselves power, and stomping on the poor to make themselves wealthier. This shit has always been around, and unfortunately will probably always be around.

Symptom of the core problem

[fortythirteen]

It's more concerning how many people have their worldview shaped by Facebook ads and posts than by how those ads can be gamed.

Re:Don't care

[drinkypoo]

At least in the case of political ads, I don't care if the advertiser lies about their true identity unless the validity of the message itself depends on it (most often, it doesn't).

The attribution is part of the message. If the identity is misreported, then that's fraud.

Did the check clear?

[thomn8r]

That's all the validation they need