Study: Facebook misidentified thousands of political ads

The researchers noted that Facebook's enforcement of the policy relies heavily on detecting keywords in ads under an automated system, although staff also play a role in moderating the content. — Photo by Warren Wong on Unsplash

PARIS: Facebook misidentified tens of thousands of advertisements flagged under its political ads policy, according to a study released Thursday, which warned that the failure could lead to political manipulation.

Researchers at Belgium's KU Leuven university and New York University examined 33.8 million Facebook ads that ran on the social media site between July 2020 and February 2021.