Thousands of UK political ads go missing from Facebook database

Thousands of political ads of the UK went missing from Facebook's searchable advertising database on December 10. It hampered the researchers' ability to keep a tab on political ads just two days prior to Britain's general election. The ad library of the UK was started in the UK in 2018. It is a public tool for users to track political advertising on the platform. The problem was first reported by an international media agency that affected the ads of the ruling Conservative Party,  the Brexit Party, and the Liberal Democrats. It was not immediately clear that if any Labour Party ads were affected.

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Facebook said bugs have been fixed

Facebook released a statement and said that all the errors have been fixed and all the affected ads are now back in the ads library. A spokesperson also confirmed that many ads in the US were also affected. Facebook’s ad library plays a major role in the elections as it has been a cornerstone of the social media giant’s efforts to be more transparent. The researchers claim that it is badly maintained and has limitations to provide detailed targeting data. Tristan Hotham, a research consultant with Who Targets Me, a watchdog that tracks digital political advertising called the ad's effective disappearance a huge failure.

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Ads appeared to be searched by the ID number

He said that a researcher expects to go back and check the data but does not expects the library to lose all its data suddenly. According to the reports, some ads appeared to be searched by the ID number of the original ad but not by the basic method of searching for names or keywords. The social media companies have been sharing more information about political advertising after the  U.S. intelligence agencies found that Russia influenced American voters with social media content during the 2016 elections. Russia has denied the allegations.

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