As Bangladesh gears up for its parliamentary election, a study by Digitally Right has revealed shortcomings in Meta's political advertising enforcement.
The study, "Hits and Misses: An Examination of Meta’s Political Ad Policy Enforcement in Bangladesh," published on Monday, found that various active political ads, lacking required disclaimers, had managed to slip through Meta's detection systems, reads a press release.
It also found issues of over-enforcement, with non-political ads facing inaccurate categorization, disproportionately affecting commercial entities.
“The inadvertent mislabeling, ranging from product promotions to employment services, prompts questions about the efficacy of Meta's ad classification algorithms,” the release says.
It reveals instances of incomplete or vague information in disclaimers provided by the advertisers that fall short of Meta's transparency standards and hint at potential gaps in the platform's verification processes leaving users in the dark about the sources funding political advertisements.
Political advertisements significantly impact democratic processes by shaping public perceptions of political systems and leadership and function as the most dominant form of communication between voters and candidates before elections.
Social media has brought about a significant transformation in electoral campaigns, enabling political actors to engage with a vast audience through advertisements, the press release adds.
“In January 2023, Bangladesh had 44.7 million social media users, representing 34.5% of the population aged 18 and above, as reported by DataReportal. Among these users, Facebook stood out with the highest number, accounting for 43.25 million. Among the major platforms only Meta, in its Ad Library, offers disclosures on ads related to election, politics and social issues — that this study terms as political ads. It allows an opportunity to scrutinize the identity of advertisers, amount spent and content of such ads.”
The study analyzed detected political ads and related disclaimer information available in the Meta Ad Library in a one-year period and ran keyword searches to identify active but undetected political ads.
Political but undetected
The under-enforcement undermines the entire purpose of political ad transparency as it represents a failure of the transparency system, which then leads to missing significant portions of political advertising on the platform, the release says.
The study found 50 active ads with clear political messages, and almost half of those ads had come straight from political figures and parties, highlighting under-enforcement. Over 90% of the undetected ads prominently displayed political party names or political figures in the text and 72% included photos of political leaders or party symbols. These ads were found by keyword search for just four days within the research period.
According to the findings, identical ads were identified as political when shared by certain pages but not when posted by others. Political demands featured on ostensibly unrelated pages bypassed detection at least in five cases. It also found a delayed response in identifying and flagging political ads, with instances of ads running for prolonged periods without disclaimers.
For instance, an ad conveying a political message remained undetected for a staggering 372 days despite accumulating a million impressions.
Advertisers evading transparency
The study analyzed 314 “paid for by” disclaimers available in the Ad Library and found that nine advertisers, including a mayoral election candidate and two politicians, had not submitted any required transparency information and yet had been allowed to display political ads.
Meta advertising guidelines require advertisers to provide phone, email, website and location addresses that are functional and correct at all times. However, the study found that 80% of the 314 disclaimers had ambiguous or insufficient address information, with 47% using only the district name. Only 17% had complete and operational addresses and 58% used a Facebook page URL instead of a website.
The findings also imply that once disclaimer information is provided, there is an inadequate effort from Meta to verify the “functionality” and “correctness” of the information in disclaimers.
“It is natural for political parties and politicians to spend in ads to reach out to a wider audience with their messages and campaigns, particularly before elections, but people must know who is spending for those political ads so that they can make informed decisions,” said Miraj Ahmed Chowdhury, founder of Digitally Right.
Non-political but detected
This study analyzed 1,420 advertisement samples from the Ad Library that had been posted by pages in the non-political category and found that about 25% of the advertisements from non-political pages (ie, commercial, news and media, and other categories) had been incorrectly detected as political. The highest rate of false positives (ie, ads erroneously identified), at 43%, occurred in the “commercial” pages category, indicating that it was the most adversely impacted by over-enforcement.
Ads promoting the sale of guidebooks, textbooks, novels, and services related to employment opportunities, studying abroad and visa applications were detected as political, seemingly for being considered as a social issue, highlighting a need for a more precise classification of social issues for Bangladesh.
Recommendations
This study's findings underline crucial areas requiring attention and improvement in ensuring transparency within online political advertising for Bangladesh.
Recommendations from the study, informed by expert interviews, highlight the necessity for Election Commission-mandated regulations, regular audits of keywords by digital platforms and stronger collaboration between various stakeholders for effective oversight.
