Washington (AFP)
Facebook was prepared to face massive influence campaigns, like those that marred the 2016 US election, but not necessarily to counter the multitude of actors who adopted the same kind of tactics, on a smaller scale, until the eve of the presidential election.
"Four years ago, there were a small number of malicious actors responsible for most of the disinformation," said Laura Edelson, a researcher at New York University (NYU).
"Now there are a lot of advertisers looking at what happened in 2016 and seeing it as a good strategy."
The Californian group had however taken many precautions, such as banning new political ads during the last seven days of the campaign.
But several flaws have been exposed in recent days.
The Wall Street Journal revealed over the weekend that certain messages of support for President Donald Trump, containing false information about his Democratic rival Joe Biden, had been shared by a conservative group, the "American Principles Project", as they had been banned before.
Facebook deleted them again after the article in the American daily.
They falsely claimed that Joe Biden supported the far-left Antifa movement and that he was in favor of transgender surgery for children.
By the time the social network intervenes, some messages had already been shared more than 3 million times, especially in key states for the ballot, according to Laura Edelson, head of an advertising observatory at NYU.
- Holes in the net -
At issue: Facebook did not automatically block copies of banned ads.
The platform "does not allow the dissemination of identical objects but someone can recreate them", explains the researcher, who also claims to have seen "the same group reposting the same ad".
"When an auditor determines that an advertisement is false, we label it as such, we demote it and we remove the advertising status from it," a Facebook spokesperson told AFP.
"We have verified these advertisements and are taking action against those who break our rules while striving to improve our system for detecting advertisements similar to those already evaluated."
In addition to the problems revealed on Sunday, there are other inconsistencies.
Last week, ads were suspended "by mistake," a Facebook ad tools manager had to admit, after numerous complaints from Democrats.
The company has also been accused of missing ads from Donald Trump's campaign team claiming election day was last Tuesday.
According to a Financial Times article, the network removed the messages, but after they were seen by around 200,000 people, mostly in Florida, Arizona and Georgia.
Difficult to assess the concrete consequences.
"In 2016, many people were taken by surprise" by the extent of the disinformation, notes Bret Schafer, a researcher with the NGO Alliance for Securing Democracy.
Today, "we are better prepared as a society but still very far from immunity. So that could have an impact," he adds.
- "Mole game" -
No other choice but to police the platforms, therefore.
But "Facebook's moderators and automated systems are failing to keep pace with the volume of methods used by different players to get around the restrictions," he says.
Traumatized by the scandals of 2016, when the platform was used for pro-Trump propaganda purposes, the social media giant knows that its management of the election is being closely followed.
Mark Zuckerberg, the group's boss, admitted last Thursday that it would be a "test".
The group has invested heavily in a third-party verification program, in which some sixty media outlets around the world, including AFP, participate.
"Our job is a bit of a less funny version of the knockout mole game," remarks Aaron Sharockman, director of PolitiFact, one of the partners.
"When we dismantle a conspiracy theory, we see ten emerge instead. That's the nature of this work and it's no surprise that malicious actors find weak spots or loopholes to exploit."
But many associations and politicians accuse the network of lacking will rather than resources.
“Technically, it's not difficult to prevent the same content from being put back online,” notes Laura Edelson of the false ads that are rebroadcast despite the ban.
"It shows that they do not take the application of the rules seriously."
© 2020 AFP