Facebook has made no attempt to hide their battle against fake news that was awash the social media platform during the 2016 USA presidential election. While Facebook has always been platform where individuals are able to share their views it was the events of that 2016 that turned the site into a political conversation hub.
It didn’t end in America though, the UK elections have also become another political issue for Facebook to handle due to questions raised about political advertisements and their funding. Although political advertisements are under the same guidelines and privacy policies as commercial advertising there are academics that are demanding greater transparency.
Daniel Kreiss, a communications professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill states, “having some kind of digital repository of ads that are purchased during a particular cycle and linked to a particular source is a good, democratic thing for the public.”
While Facebook has claimed to be open to academic research proposals Rob Sherman, Facebook’s deputy chief privacy officer has said “Even if we were able to be more transparent in this area, it would only be a very small piece of an overall story.”
This unwillingness to disclose political advertisement information undoubtedly has to do with potential loss of revenue seeing as Facebook seems to have minimal qualms regarding privacy.
What do you think? Should Facebook remain consistent with their advertising privacy policy? Or do we have a right to know what organisations are funding the content we see when we make political decisions in our democracy?