![]() A major shared shortcoming is the lack of meaningful, complete and accurate data provided in the libraries, including targeting criteria, data on the intended and reached audiences, exact spend, ad performance, and targeting mechanisms. However, the different ad libraries showed a number of shared as well as platform-specific shortcomings. These ad libraries were supposed to provide a user-friendly overview of all political and issue ads. Ad Libraries & Application Programming Interfaces (APIs): Ad libraries were created by the three platforms as the main transparency tool that was newly rolled out for the EU Member States ahead of the European Parliament elections in 2019. Through this, it failed to identify and avoid inauthentic behaviour through both verified accounts and fake accounts.ģ. Particularly, the verification system failed to account for third-parties, proxy advertisers and social media influencers, thereby failing to provide transparency on such political advertising practices and the advertisers themselves. Meanwhile, the verification procedure for political advertisers is overly burdensome and lengthy, and the platforms could not deliver in verifying all advertisers who had embarked on the verification process in time for the European Parliament elections. Ads labelling and verification of advertisers: The ad labelling system provides insufficient information on the reasons for targeting users and the data used to make these decisions. campaigns on environmental issues, migration, encouraging voter turnout) which were either completely overlooked or intensely scrutinized.Ģ. Particularly affected were issue ads (e.g. Without a clear definition, tech companies were forced to come up with their own definitions of political ads, which resulted in inconsistencies through platforms on what was labelled as a political ad and was subject to scrutiny, and what bypassed the verification systems set in place by the tech platforms to verify content and transparency. ![]() Defining political ads: While establishing a unanimous definition of what classifies as a political ad is difficult, the lack of a clear definition within the Code of Practice was detrimental to its application. Our research identified the following issues with regards to increasing the transparency of political ads:ġ. Following this, the researchers submitted a series of recommendations to the European Commission, the EU Member States, and held multiple multi-stakeholder policy dialogues in Brussels and Member State capitals. The researchers interviewed key stakeholders from political parties, civil society, national regulators and digital platforms to assess the extent of meaningful transparency, and the interplay between the EU Code of Practice and national legislation. Throughout these three case studies, researchers examined the extent to which Facebook, Google and Twitter fulfilled their commitments outlined in the Code of Practice on Online Disinformation regarding enhanced transparency of digital political advertising, in the context of the 2019 European Parliament elections. The research focused on three case studies in Italy, the Czech Republic, and the Netherlands. Read the full publication by clicking here. ![]() Research funded by civitates and carried out by EPD and its partners shows that the first attempts to regulate online political campaigning at EU level, through the EU Code of Practice on Online Disinformation have failed to ensure the transparency of online political advertising campaigns. ![]()
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