
We posed as 100 Senators to run ads on Facebook. Facebook approved all of them - pulisse
https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/xw9n3q/we-posed-as-100-senators-to-run-ads-on-facebook-facebook-approved-all-of-them
======
josefresco
"In announcing new transparency efforts or tools to combat foreign influence,
Facebook included a caveat. “These changes will not prevent abuse entirely.
We’re up against smart, creative and well-funded adversaries who change their
tactics as we spot abuse,” Leathern wrote. But we believe that they will help
prevent future interference in elections on Facebook. And it is why they are
so important.”

But posing as 100 senators didn’t require being smart, creative, or even
particularly well-funded. "

Ouch.

"There was one “Paid for” disclosure that Facebook didn’t approve in our
latest test. They denied, just a couple minutes after we submitted it: Mark
Zuckerberg."

Double ouch.

~~~
andrewflnr
That's probably one of the only people they could actually be sure wasn't
buying Facebook ads. Whereas a senator buying Facebook ads is, in itself,
quite likely. Not really a fair comparison.

~~~
eridius
So what you're saying is, because a senator could conceivably be running ads,
then any ad that claims to be by a senator should be approved without
scrutiny?

Besides being preposterous, that same argument applies to literally anybody in
the world except, I guess, Mark Zuckerberg.

So it sounds like Facebook's algorithm for detecting abuse is `if submitter ==
"Mark Zuckerberg" { reject(); }`

~~~
sebcat
> So what you're saying is, because a senator could conceivably be running
> ads, then any ad that claims to be by a senator should be approved without
> scrutiny?

That was not said in the message you replied to.

~~~
Angostura
Its not entirely clear what the message _was_ saying, in my opinion

------
jabagonuts
> VICE News did not buy any Facebook ads as part of the test; rather, we
> received approval to include "Paid for by" disclosures for potential ads.

Playing devil’s advocate here, but maybe Facebook doesn’t waste time on people
who don’t actually buy ads? Would be a much more compelling argument if the
were actually able to purchase and run ads, and would be curious to see if the
actual act of payment triggered a real review from Facebook.

This kind of feels like me as a software developer saying my code works in
production! Disclaimer: I never actually deployed it, I only got approval to
deploy it.

~~~
jjeaff
The fact that the Zuckerberg ad was rejected seems to indicate that they
really were being put through a vetting process. It's possible they are vetted
again after payment is received but that seems unlikely.

~~~
happertiger
No it only proves they reject ads from the founder of the company. That’s the
only proof you can establish based on the facts. There is no evidence they are
vetting anything, and in fact it’s more likely they just filter out zuck.*
than the implication that a larger system is at work (Occams razor).

~~~
dibstern
Hahaha my god dude. First, he said it seems to indicate, not prove beyond a
reasonable doubt. Second, you think it’s more likely that they filter every
single request specifically for Zuckerberg, but do all of the other filtering
later on in the pipeline? It’s much more likely that all the filtering happens
at the one time, especially at a place like Facebook where most engineers seem
to focus on optimising something for performance gains.

Occam’s Razor - it’s knocking on your door, asking to not be quoted when
you’re not actually using it.

~~~
josefresco
"but do all of the other filtering later on in the pipeline?"

I believe the parent comment was claiming there is no general filter and/or
vetting for others - only for Zuck.

------
dillondoyle
I buy political ads as a big part of our business.

This cycle, FB is FAR easier to work with than Google.

I get the sense that FB simply wants to pass off the liability to ad buyer
(who signed an affidavit to run those paid for ads... and Vice broke that
contract but also probably the law). Whereas Google is giving huge problems
for basically all our clients because they seem to be doing manual DD.

Not focusing on whether or not FB should take on this DD, as an ad buyer FB's
approach and process is at least 10x smoother - at least for us. I'm not
joking. can only think of one odd compliance issue we had with mismatched IG
and FB profile names.

Google on the other hand... problems every time. Problems in the approval
process to get personally approved (ux and process is horrid) and then they
constantly reject ads we submit as unapproved for politics, despite going
through this process many many times.

~~~
StreamBright
>>> I get the sense that FB simply wants to pass off the liability to ad buyer

Totally. It is Russia's responsibility not to accidentally or knowingly meddle
with an election, not Facebook's. I guess there is one last question, what was
Zuckerberg doing in a congressional hearing?

~~~
jklein11
I'm assuming this is sarcasm but I can kind of see the case that Facebook is
making here.

For example, if a drunk person behind the wheel of a Ford does a tremendous
amount of damaage, no one goes after Ford for not preventing it.

Facebook is a tool. Is it Facebook's responsibility to make sure that everyone
uses it ethically? I can understand putting in measures to make sure that
everyone is using it legally and have a mechanism to help authorities stop bad
actors but deciding what a "bad actor" is shouldn't Facebook's responsibility.

~~~
abainbridge
However, if a newspaper prints a story saying senator X said Y, and that claim
was false, then the newspaper can be sued, regardless of where they got that
information or which employee wrote the story.

Given your analogy, the question is, is Facebook more like a car manufacturer
or a newspaper?

~~~
count
If a newspaper runs an advertisement that turns out to be false (say, a fake
claim about a thing for sale), is it the newspaper or the advertiser who's at
fault?

~~~
yorwba
The advertiser. But if someone sues the advertiser and it turns out that the
person listed by the newspaper as the advertiser isn't actually the
advertiser, it's the newspaper's fault for not verifying their customers.

~~~
jklein11
So it is the newspaper's fault that their customer lied to them?

~~~
sabizmil
There are certain industries that have requirements for vetting customers, and
if those requirements are not met then responsibility falls on the company and
not the customer.

If a car manufacturer distributes a car that did not go through any
inspections and it turns out the brake lines were hooked up incorrectly and
consequently causes damage or hurts the customer then it's neither the
customer or the dealership who are at fault, but the manufacturer for failing
to properly inspect the product that they are making.

In the same sense, if a bar sells beer to someone without asking for their ID
and they turn out to be underage, or a gun store sells a weapon to a convicted
felon without performing a background check, liability falls on the company
and not the customer.

I am not sure if this should apply to newspapers in respect to their
advertising, but there are examples where this line of thinking does apply and
this might be one of them.

------
amichal
I am appalled at how bad Facebook did here but buried at the very end of the
article Vice does indicate that they needed to provide a valid traceable
drivers license and last four of a (maybe?) matching SSN. This means that had
they intended to actually publish the ads they would have put some real person
on the hook (assuming the submitted data is actually checked against
something). Still too easy but for the first 90% of the article I thought
there was absolutely zero verification

~~~
Zyst
>In order to run a “Paid for by” disclosure on Facebook, you must first submit
the name to the company for approval, along with an image of a valid driver’s
license and the last four digits of your Social Security number.

Paragraph in question.

Are the driver's licences they used not the ones of the Senators? Or maybe
they photoshopped them, or something along those lines?

I'm a bit unhappy at the lack of elaboration on the methodology they used to
test this out.

~~~
waisbrot
Yes, it's difficult to follow exactly what they did. This:

> We used 10 fake Facebook pages with no content, and changed the “paid for”
> disclosure after each senator was approved.

Makes it sound to me like they got approval using a real identity and then
changed the now-approved account to use a different name.

Methodology aside, though, Facebook shouldn't be showing that they verified
the identity if they did not verify the identity. Unless the methodology was
"we stole the identities of some senators" or "we cracked their passwords",
this is a failure a another breach of trust on Facebook's part.

~~~
gopher2
Based on other's comments in the thread about having their advertisements not
approved by FB, it sounds like Facebook does have an approval process that is
greater than just "literally not Mark Zuckerberg".

However, Vice got around this by getting an ad approved and then editing
(changing entirely?) the name and other properties of the ad. Maybe Facebook
should re-approve ads when certain properties change? It's definitely
impersonation... I'm not sure what officially constitutes stealing an
identity.

I'd be curious how this experiment of impersonating a senator and buying
advertising would go across print/billboards/reddit/other platforms. Maybe
Vice will try some more experiments.

------
rchaud
I'd like to see more of this type of 'stress testing' of adtech networks,
conducted by third parties, with the methodology and results made available to
the public.

Programmatic advertising is a black box as far as ad buyers and ad viewers are
concerned. And it is exactly for this reason that companies can claim to have
"machine learning based fraud detection systems" or whatever and have those
claims go unchallenged.

~~~
taurath
Or maybe you know, identity verification might be a good feature if you want
to keep your ad platform.

------
andrewflnr
People need to think very carefully about the consequences of any policy they
propose to curb this sort of behavior. Do we really want Facebook making
judgment calls about the content of political ads? Do they need to do thorough
real-life identity verification of people buying any ads, or any ads that may
be construed as political? Then the real kicker: does every ad provider need
to do this, or just the ones that are too big to fail? Requiring that level of
effort would quash small ad providers in the same way that onerous copyright
verification laws would quash small content hosts. Not doing so has its own
obvious problems.

I see no good solutions.

~~~
tracker1
How much better would life be if there had to be an in-person verification for
advertisers... along the lines of an EV cert. Man, how much crappy
advertisements, scam, malware ads would just disappear if this were a
requirement all around.

~~~
andrewflnr
Hmm. Maybe small players could outsource verification to specialists with
economies of scale. It would let some crap through, but it might be worth it
overall.

------
hadrien01
The best solution, and currently in effect as law in many European countries,
would be to stop political ads altogether on Facebook and the Web.

No more "hey who is paying for that anti-XXX political ad?", they just
wouldn't exist anymore. Plus, less money raised and spent by political
campaigns.

Also, this article comes just one week after that one: "Facebook’s political
ad tool let us buy ads “paid for” by Mike Pence and ISIS" [0]

[0] [https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/wj9mny/facebooks-
politic...](https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/wj9mny/facebooks-political-ad-
tool-let-us-buy-ads-paid-for-by-mike-pence-and-isis)

~~~
hoorayimhelping
For varying definitions of best.

We have the first amendment in America. It says the government can't make laws
that limit a private citizen's ability to express themselves (among other
things). That includes their political advertising. This is a really dangerous
/ slippery precedent to set, and the whole "we should change longstanding laws
to deal with a problem that feels like a local maximum" is something that many
people throughout history have warned us not to do.

I think (and I don't think this is an uncommon position in America) that some
political ads on facebook is way less of an evil than letting our government
dictate what is allowed to be said by whom and when. No thanks.

~~~
TomMckenny
>...political advertising...

This is a euphemism for quid pro quo bribery. The Europeans and other
democracies recognize it as such.

It is clear that the Western Democracies have at least as much freedom of
speech as the US. For example, they do not have leaders who get sport figures
professionally banned for what is conspicuously an instance of unpaid
political speech.

~~~
manigandham
Absolutely not. Advertising is not bribery and the European region is nowhere
near the freedom of speech principles of the US. It may feel the same, either
because you have never said anything or have never been heard by anyone who
cares, but there are countless examples of prosecution that would be summarily
dismissed here in the States.

Professionally "banned" is not a free speech issue in the slightest. Athletes
can do whatever they want, however they are still employees and if they want
to enjoy their multi-million dollar salaries then they will need to follow the
rules of their employer and the sports leagues. You will not be punished by
the government for what you say, but you are not entitled to a job without
consequences either.

~~~
coffeemug
_> Professionally "banned" is not a free speech issue in the slightest._

This line of reasoning never made sense to me. Free speech is both a legal and
a cultural issue. A modern society cannot credibly claim to be free on legal
grounds alone. Yeah, the government won't put me in prison or fine me, but if
I get fired for being a staunch liberal (or conservative) then I'm not really
free, am I? This doesn't _just_ apply to rich athletes -- in most
organizations in SF I would not feel particularly safe expressing what seem to
me fairly moderate views.

Depriving people of their livelihood for expressing political views is
absolutely a free speech issue. Perhaps not in a legal/constitutional sense,
but a cultural sense for sure. There were plenty of stretches in the Soviet
Union where they wouldn't imprison you, but would fire you for a poorly timed
political joke. Starting down that cultural slope is a really bad idea.

~~~
mmmBacon
The US Constitution also codifies freedom of association so you can have free
speech but you can’t force me to associate with you. In the US companies have
freedom of association as long as they don’t violate a protected class ( race,
religion, sex, age, national origin, etc...). Since you the government can’t
force a company to associate with someone they disagree with, you can be fired
for things you say.

~~~
skrebbel
GP explicitly called out that there is not just a legal issue of free speech,
but also a cultural one. Your response, "but it's legal!" in short, does not
address that at all.

Lots of things are legal but maybe not what we want. I'd say a working culture
where having the wrong political opinion can get you fired is definitely one
of them.

~~~
manigandham
Think that through then - what do you want the government do to in that
situation? Start to police culture? How would that go? Are you sure that won't
end in unintended consequences?

~~~
skrebbel
Who says I (or @coffeemug) is arguing for government action?

~~~
manigandham
Do you have another way to police and enforce culture? What are you actually
arguing then, since you claim the comments don't address your issue?

------
40acres
Facebook would not be where it is today if their programmatic advertising
tools were not friction-less, it's going to be interesting to watch them
balance ease of use for customers while securing their system vs. bad actors.

~~~
734786710934
You have to give Facebook a copy of your ID, your SSN and wait for them to
snail-mail you a code before you can get as far as Vice did. There's nothing
friction-less about it.

~~~
testvox
Well normal ads you do not need to do any of that, you just need to have an
account and a credit card. But yes for political ads you are supposed to go
through their "Identity Confirmation and Authorization" process
[https://www.facebook.com/business/m/one-sheeters/ads-with-
po...](https://www.facebook.com/business/m/one-sheeters/ads-with-political-
content-us)

------
artichokeheart
Facebook are sorry and they will endeavour to apologise again next time.

------
Bucephalus355
I’ve noticed on AWS I can sign up for and get an AWSGov account from my plain
old personal account. It fully works, I can run EC2 Servers, get a weird style
government bill that I have to pay, etc.

Also, can anyone really believe Facebooks first attempts on this would be any
kind of successful? Just a year ago their fake news plan was to link to
verification about articles to facts on WIKIPEDIA. Do they not know how the
internet works?

~~~
toomanybeersies
That seems like an intended feature. I think that AWS GovCloud isn't designed
for classified information, or for Government use only.

From the advertising page:

> The region is operated by employees who are U.S. citizens on U.S. soil. The
> region is only accessible to vetted U.S. entities and root account holders,
> who must confirm they are U.S. Persons to gain access to this region.

As long as you've proved you're a US Entity, it seems like you should be able
to use GovCloud.

GovCloud seems like it's just some box-checking activity to ensure that there
aren't any foreigners interacting with the system. Other than that, it's not
any different from normal AWS regions.

~~~
astura
>GovCloud seems like it's just some box-checking activity to ensure that there
aren't any foreigners interacting with the system.

This is exactly it; it's a compliance thing. GovCloud is compliant with
various regulations that the government has for its data handling and storage

GovCloud is used by private entities that are doing business with the
government - for example, contractors.

------
jandrese
Seems to me they didn't test the whole path. They never bought the ads, so
they may have declared success before the actual check happens.

------
ridgeguy
Perhaps we could mandate a shutdown of Facebook and Twitter 1 week prior to
elections. This wouldn't impede citizens' ability to exercise their first
amendment right to speak, as there are many, many other outlets for citizens'
speech.

This would temporarily remove two channels through which manipulators can
scale damage instantly. That would help.

I think the benefit of doing something like this would be so useful that I'd
be glad to give Facebook & Twitter a tax break on their lost revenue.

I mean, neither Facebook nor Twitter will adopt any effective measure that
hits their revenues. We have to do it for them.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
If we're going down that route we should shut down the tabloid press too.

------
dschuetz
I don't understand. What is expected from Facebook concerning political ads?
Should Facebook do the work of fact checking on behalf of viewers, instead of
users fact checking on their own? Why is it that actual fact checking is being
outsourced to social media companies (due to fear of foreign influence)?
Should we also outsource voting too then?

~~~
the_duke
Well, if FB is not interested in doing any actual verification, they should
not have introduced a "Paid for by" feature.

These tests made it clear that the whole thing was just paying lip service to
appease the public without any real intent to do the actual work.

------
citilife
Could this not be considered identity theft?

~~~
Isamu
§ 11.432 Impersonating a public servant. A person commits a misdemeanor if he
or she falsely pretends to hold a position in the public service with purpose
to induce another to submit to such pretended official authority or otherwise
to act in reliance upon that pretense to his or her prejudice.

~~~
housingpost
That wouldn’t hold up in this case, because of that very important word
“purpose”. They weren’t trying to get anything due to authority. In fact they
were trying to make sure that Facebook was only approving ads by the actual
authority.

~~~
rconti
Which is what I think parent was pointing out. Even if they ran ads saying
"vote for me", it probably wouldn't fall under that language. They'd have to
be inducing action in their official capacity, not as a candidate.

------
tracker1
Did they pose as third party candidates? Haven't read TFA, but do know several
third party candidates that were petitioning for ballot support that had huge
issues with getting ads approved, even for pages/accounts that were approved.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Did they pose as third party candidates?

Well, independent candidates at least, since they posed as all 100 _current_
Senators, which includes 2 independents.

------
INTPenis
It's definitely a case of hanlon's razor for Facebook but it does show how
easy someone with the right resources can exploit social networking sites to
manufacture consent for example.

~~~
eiaoa
> It's definitely a case of hanlon's razor for Facebook but it does show how
> easy someone with the right resources can exploit social networking sites to
> manufacture consent for example.

It doesn't even look like you need the right resources, just the motivation
and willingness to exploit it.

------
giarc
Why even allow a "Paid For By" as an option to everyone. I imagine for all
senators, Facebook has an ad rep that has been assigned to their media
strategy team. That rep could then assign a user or group of users that are
known ad buyers for the senator and flip a switch in the background that adds
the "Paid For By" message.

------
vladsanchez
Just watch _Frontline 's The Facebook Dilemma_

[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/facebook-
dilemma/](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/facebook-dilemma/)

------
lr4444lr
Has there actually been any research showing significant impact on voting
preference based on seeing paid Facebook ads? In my experience, most people
are putting credence in content specifically shared by their like-minded
network, not paid targeted ads.

------
ungzd
Do they have premoderation in ad system? I see lots of outright money scam and
gambling ads in Instagram every day (in Russian language) (AFAIK, Instagram
uses the same ad system as Facebook). Most of ads that I see in Instagram have
pornsite-grade quality.

------
znpy
"An advertising-fueled company accepts to publish ads for money. No one is
impressed." \-- I can already see the headline on a certain website I am not
supposed to mention.

------
gopher2
What percentage of ad revenue for Facebook is 'political' ads?

------
caseysoftware
It's almost like it's Facebook's business model to accept ads from anyone for
anyone.. damn the consequences.

The advertising business model is so broken.

------
dimillian
I hate the US system because more money = more exposure. This is broken at so
many level. This is hell.

------
dpatrick86
Interesting journalistic experiment, however, ads like these are irrelevant
unless they can push the amount of exposure that shifts elections. That's
going to take a lot of money. The question, then, becomes not whether they can
get ads approved, but whether they stay approved even as dollars are poured
in.

A more expensive experiment to run, in that case.

------
forgottenpass
By telling Facebook to gatekeep what gets advertised better, there is a tacit
admission that adverting is manipulative in a way that can not be defended
from by the viewer, but simultaneously fine to expose the public to as long as
we control that the manipulation happens in the ways editors at the large news
organs agree with.

~~~
soared
That is a tautology and you could make the same claim about anything that is
regulated.

~~~
sincerely
Well, advertising is a little different than e.g. alcohol or cigarettes
because it's not something you make a conscious choice to consume.

------
dollar
Meanwhile, they randomly disapprove our ads all the time and refuse to tell us
why.

------
hsnewman
This is why I am not a part or participate in Facebook.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
What do you want, a medal?

------
r_singh
In the capitalist world that we live in, such things shouldn't surprise us at
all.

Cigarette shops sell kids cigarettes without checking for ID. Heck doctors
sell questionable products to helpless patrons. Facebook sells ads to
politically motivated buyers without cross-checking who's buying.

The only thing that surprises me about this is that this leniency in vetting
buyers potentially has an effect on who will remain in power and so should be
a priority for the govt. to fix or require stricter regulation. Prods me think
whether they're actually benefitting from this or just don't have time and are
turning a blind eye due to coincidental reasons.

------
crudbug
This is Journalism !

------
Jonanin
This article is a clickbait smear at best. They didn't actually get to _run
any ads_ , because you need a valid SSN and Driver's license to do so. The
only thing they demonstrated is their ability to break federal laws by
impersonating senators.

------
throwaway2048
I'm sure they will tell everyone that they have to do better, and that in the
future things will be different.

------
diogenescynic
This seems criminally negligent. Especially so given all the other election as
I ssues in the last election... Why isn’t Facebook taking this more seriously?

We seriously cannot expect corporations to do the right thing. We need to
regulate political ads and have campaign finance reform. Our democracy is
beginning to rot.

------
dandare
The brutality of torture in Chinese prisons in unimaginable.

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=falun+gong+torture&atb=v128-4_f&ia...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=falun+gong+torture&atb=v128-4_f&iax=images&ia=images)

Of course, it is not just China, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and many others still
use brutal medieval torture.

------
zallarak
Unpopular opinion: who cares? I think the business is gross, and I have not
had a Facebook account for 10 years. If you disapprove of it, just don't use
it. Complaining about Facebook's actions is like complaining about sugar being
unhealthy. Don't force sugar to change its molecular composition, just stop
eating it.

~~~
thejerz
100% agree. No reasonable person browsing the internet has an expectation of
truth. When someone says, "But Facebook told me this ad was paid for by Nancy
Pelosi," the answer isn't to pass regulations forcing Facebook to verify
advertisers, the answer is to reply to that person, "And why did you believe
them?"

~~~
lucasmullens
I think most reasonable people think that a Facebook ad that says it's paid
for by Nancy Pelosi is in fact paid by her. Facebook shouldn't have a "paid
for by" feature if they can't stand behind it.

