As India’s general elections reach its peak, Meta India, one of the prominent tech platforms for political advertising, has been accused of approving a series of political ads, which allegedly spread disinformation and fuel religious tensions.
These ads, submitted by India Civil Watch International (ICWI) and corporate accountability group Ek?, meant to test Meta’s content moderation were based on real hate speech and misinformation.
The political ads, approved between May 8 and 13 on Meta-owned Facebook, included derogatory language towards Indian Muslims, Hindu supremacist rhetoric and false claims about political figures. The test ads were taken off after Meta approved them for running on Facebook.
“In total, 14 out of 22 highly inflammatory ads were approved by Meta within 24 hours; all of the approved ads broke Meta’s own policies on hate speech, bullying and harassment,” claimed the group, adding, “Meta is failing to detect and block ads containing AI-generated images promoting hate speech, election disinformation, and incitement to violence.”
In response to e4m’s questions, Meta’s spokesperson said: “As part of our ads review process—which includes both automated and human reviews—we have several layers of analysis and detection, both before and after an ad goes live. Because the authors immediately deleted the ads in question, we cannot comment on the claims made."
Reacting to the issue, an advertising veteran said, “Disinformation aims to confuse and polarize society at large for political, military, or commercial purposes through orchestrated campaigns to strategically spread deceptive or manipulative media content. On social media, disinformation tools include bots, deep fakes, fake news and conspiracy theories.”
Political parties are investing substantial sums in advertising campaigns on social media platforms, utilizing hyper-targeted digital tools.
Shadow advertisers spent $1 million: Study
Another study conducted by ICWI, Ek?- and The London Story titled “Slander, Lies, and Incitement: India’s million-dollar election meme network” found that two dozen “shadow advertisers” have spent $1 million to amplify scores of memes, short video content and cartoons to dehumanize minorities and opposition parties over the first three months of this year.
This shadow advertising accounts for over 22 per cent of all political ads. Of them, 36 ads had reached 65 million impressions each.
“Our analysis highlights that despite on-paper commitments made by social media companies such as Meta to act in favour of democracy, the profit incentives and monetization models paint a different picture: wherein the virtual town spaces are comfortably ceded to the highest bidders, and voices of representation are drowned in the noise created by shadow campaigners,” the report stated.
Growth in deceptive online content
Deceptive online content is big business. The prevalence of surrogate and shadow advertising used on social media platforms in India has been reported during the previous Lok Sabha and state elections as well.
Google, for instance, has been removing a large number of advertisements from its platforms published on behalf of India’s prominent political outfits. However, by the time the platforms realize that the particular ads violated their content policy, the message had already reached millions.
Google India and Meta India pocketed nearly Rs 28,000 crore and Rs 18,000 crore, respectively, in terms of ad revenues in FY23.
Though it is unclear how much of their revenues came from political advertising, experts believe that a significant chunk of Meta and Google’s revenue comes from political ads that are often floated round the year due to state or local elections in some or other part of the country. In the year of general elections, the amount of advertising skyrockets as the stakes are high.
