Thousands of political ads on Facebook were unclear about who paid for them

A yearlong analysis of Facebook’s 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.

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...

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