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Beyond the Guidelines: Assessing Meta's Political Ad Moderation in the EU

Published: 04 November 2024 Publication History

Abstract

This study examines Meta's enforcement of its political advertising policies across 16 European Union countries. Leveraging a comprehensive dataset provided by Meta under the European Digital Services Act, encompassing all ads targeting EU countries, our analysis exposes shortcomings in Meta's ad moderation. In particular, over 60% of the ads moderated as political by Meta do not fall under Meta's guidelines. Also, we estimate that only 7.7% of undeclared political ads, i.e., political ads that are not declared as such by advertisers, undergo moderation by Meta. These results highlight substantial deficiencies in Meta's regulation of political advertisements, underscoring the need for enhanced measures to safeguard democratic discourse.

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      cover image ACM Conferences
      IMC '24: Proceedings of the 2024 ACM on Internet Measurement Conference
      November 2024
      812 pages
      ISBN:9798400705922
      DOI:10.1145/3646547
      Publication rights licensed to ACM. ACM acknowledges that this contribution was authored or co-authored by an employee, contractor or affiliate of a national government. As such, the Government retains a nonexclusive, royalty-free right to publish or reproduce this article, or to allow others to do so, for Government purposes only.

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      Published: 04 November 2024

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      Author Tags

      1. advertisement
      2. digital services act
      3. facebook
      4. meta
      5. moderation

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      IMC '24
      IMC '24: ACM Internet Measurement Conference
      November 4 - 6, 2024
      Madrid, Spain

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