I see Thomas Borwick - ex CA, CTO Vote Leave, current local Conservative association vice chair - has been buying more odd Facebook ads. (Thread). If you live in Scotland you might have seen these anti-Lib Dem (and pro-SNP) ads: 
SNP spokesperson told me: "We were not aware of these ads and have no relationship with the organisation involved." Lib Dems called the ads "deceitful." What's particularly interesting is these ads run by company called 3rd Party owned by T Borwick. opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-…
3rd party has spent over £4k on Facebook ads in this election. Borwick won't say who is funding this but last month he told me that he was running a pro-environmental campaign (3rd Party pretended to be Green party). But these are very obviously party political. What's his game?
These aren't the only bizarre ads 3rd Party is running. In England voters have been targeted w/ads asking if Labour is "really on the side" of Grenfell residents and Kensington residents. Who was previously Tory MP for Kensington? Victoria Borwick, Thomas's mum.
3rd Party has also targeted pro-Brexit ads at voters in Belfast and is now running ads to help Iain Duncan Smith's campaign in Chingford. Who is paying for this? We have no idea. 3rd Party hasn't said.
Thomas Borwick has lots experience using data. As well as Cambridge Analytica and Vote Leave he worked on the anti-repeal campaign in the Irish abortion referendum. As @openDemocracy revealed last year, he harvested electoral registers from across UK opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocra…
Striking feature of #GE2019 is how much anonymous campaigns spend on digital ads. As @FT showed today, £500k + rising fast ft.com/content/f42f9a… Vast bulk of these campaigns push pro-Conservative messages and scarcely regulated. Anonymous money goes in, disinformation comes out
Shadowy campaigns like 3rd Party are perfect vehicles for dark money and disinformation. Why buy all these contradictory ads? One possibility is voter suppression. Another is deliberately sowing confusion. Or even just to look like you're in the game. W/such lax rules who knows
Lots of good people to follow on this digital shadiness, @rowlsmanthorpe @cynthiao @Gmvolpi (who broke the 3rd Party story w/this great @WIRED read wired.co.uk/article/vote-l…). Over @openDemocracy we will continue to track the dark money in British politics thru #ge2019 and beyond
@rowlsmanthorpe @cynthiao @Gmvolpi @WIRED @openDemocracy And do follow @wrklsshrd and @WhoTargetsMe who have been doing great work to push for digital transparency. The wonderful @LizCarolan, @martinjemoore and many others.
