Facebook’s role in European elections under scrutiny

“These political ads aren’t regulated; nobody knows what is being said on Facebook,” said Dodd, 26, who plans to vote for the Labour Party in Thursday’s elections, but who continued to be bombarded with online messages from the Conservatives.

[...] concern has been growing since the U.S. presidential election about the social network’s role in campaigns, including about how politically charged fake news is spread online.

[...] as voters head to the polls across Europe, groups in Britain, Germany and elsewhere are fighting back, creating ways to track and monitor digital political ads and misinformation on Facebook, Twitter and Google.

In response, Britain’s privacy watchdog has started an investigation into whether such political advertising breached its strict data protection rules.

The company says that its roughly 2 billion users worldwide have complete control over which ads they are shown, and that it is the responsibility of individual political parties to comply with their countries’ electoral laws.

Facebook and other technology companies have tried to improve what is shared and circulated online, creating partnerships with news outlets to debunk digital falsehoods and cracking down on how fake news websites make money through advertising on social media.

The social networking giant also sponsored get-out-the-vote campaigns, and encouraged political groups to create Facebook pages to promote their messages.

Yet during the recent French presidential election, which pitted centrist candidate and eventual winner Emmanuel Macron against the far-right hopeful Marine Le Pen, several media organizations including Le Monde said they had found it difficult — and overly cumbersome — to report potential fake news items about the candidates to Facebook.