Thread by @privacyint

NEW - social media companies have failed to provide adequate ad transparency to users globally

Our research shows that FB, Google, + Twitter have made the deliberate decision to provide some users w increased transparency + some w nothing

Full research👇
privacyinternational.org/long-read/3244…

Some highlights from our research:

1/ In places where companies are under pressure to act [by govs, institutions like the EU, or civil society], they have adopted self-regulatory practices. Where such pressure is absent, they have by and large failed to act.

2/ FB, Google, + Twitter have taken a blatantly fragmented approach to providing users with political ad transparency. Most users around the world remain without meaningful insight into how political ads are being targeted through these platforms.

3/ FB provides some transparency for political ads in 35 countries (~17% of the countries in the world)

This means that for roughly ~83% of countries, FB doesn't require political advertisers to become authorised, for political ads to carry disclosures, or for ads to be archived

4/ Google provides heightened transparency for political ads in 30 countries (~15% of countries)

How is it that Google can reportedly earn $32.6 billion USD in one quarter from digital ads but be unwilling to provide users meaningful transparency about how such ads are targeted?

5/ Twitter provides heightened transparency for ads tied to specific elections (rather than political ads more generally) in 32 countries (~16% of the countries in the world).

privacyinternational.org/long-read/3244…

6/ Outside of the US, Twitter does not treat political ads or political issue ads differently from promoted tweets, meaning that these ads (which are political, but not tied to an election), run without heightened transparency.

7/ For example, our research shows a UK Brexit party ad being run on Twitter without being marked political, and therefore with no targeting information provided. The ad has since been deleted.

8/ Google has not defined what it considers to be "political issues" and therefore insight into what issue ads have run or are running and to whom they are being show is impossible. (Google did not respond to PI requests.)

9/ The targeting information provided by Facebook, Google, and Twitter is inadequate - it is still impossible to understand who political advertisers are targeting across the three platforms.

10/ The ad libraries of FB, Google, + Twitter, in varying degrees, only provide broad ranges of targeting info. This is especially problematic given the granularity w which political advertisers are able to micro-target ads at users.

11/ Google is especially deficient given that it only provides to the average user broad ranges of the number of times an ad [100K-1M] was shown, rather than detailed information about to whom an ad was targeted.

privacyinternational.org/long-read/3244…

12/ Here are three maps that show the countries where the companies have taken some action. As you can see, most users around the world lack meaningful insight into how ads are being targeted through these platforms.

privacyinternational.org/long-read/3244…

Google's response to Reuters is revealing: “we know there is more work to be done and we’re looking at ways to bring more political ads transparency to more regions and more types of elections.”

The company didn't respond to our requests.

reuters.com/article/us-tec…