NYU researchers say Facebook advertisers lied about their identity

A yearlong analysis of Facebook – Ad Library has revealed “significant systemic flaws” in the way the platform monitors and enforces its political ad rules, according to researchers at New York University.

The issues were uncovered as part of the NYU team’s audit of the Ad Library between May 2018 and June 2019, which found some $37 million worth of ads did not accurately disclose who was paying for them in spite on new laws for online privacy.

Researchers Laura Edelson, Tobias Lauringer, and Damon McCoy found more than 86,000 Facebook Pages that ran political ads with the misleading disclosures, the report states. More than 19,000 ads appeared to be paid for by “likely inauthentic communities,” with groups of Pages promoting near-identical images or messages targeted at swing state voters.

The inauthentic ads used “disinformation tactics similar to those employed by the Russian-backed Internet Research Agency,” including targeting readers by race, gender, union membership or veteran status,” the report states. The Internet Research Agency is believed to be behind efforts in 2016 to hack emails from the Democratic National Committee.

A Facebook spokesperson told The Verge in an email that “our authorization and transparency measures have meaningfully changed since the research was conducted,” adding that the social media platform offers “more transparency into political and issue advertising than TV, radio or any other digital ad platform.”