Is this the latest deterioration of accountability in political campaigning? Lower than Social Welfare groups? Lower than Citizens United?
I've been seeing political ads like these appearing in my Facebook news feed. These appear as "sponsored" posts. These are paid ads (click on "sponsored" for details). They're 100% attack ads, similar to the distorted, misleading attack ads we see on TV, or even worse, and they have no financial disclosure and no disclosure of who is responsible.
Anonymous "sponsored" (paid) attack ad on Facebook
Worse, these seem to be part of a widespread, coordinated attack. More after the break...
The main problem I have with them (apart from what appears to be a coordinated attack against all NY Senate democratic candidates in closes races) is there's no statement of who paid for them, unlike on TV or in print, where there's always a box identifying the sponsor. This means there's no way to know who's behind them. I believe campaign finance laws require disclosure for all election expenditures. Since these have none, I believe they're illegal. I've checked the Board of Elections site, and there are no disclosures under the name "The REAL Terry Gipson", and there's no other organization named in the ad.
Because there's no disclosure, there's no way to hold anyone accountable.
Because there's no statement of origin, I'm willing to bet that there's no disclosure of this money anywhere. It's 100% completely dark money, even more so than Social Welfare group money. Anyone, even foreign governments could theoretically post these types of ads, and know one could tell. And because it's only online, pushed as a suggested post to the advertisers target demographic, they're probably hard for regulators to discover or trace.
There's other insidious behavior too. I tried commenting on one of these pointing out the lack of disclosure, and they deleted my post and blocked me. It appears all supportive comments are allowed to remain, but any in disagreement will get you blocked. This leaves the impression that everyone is in agreement.
I got targeted by 2 of these (apparently Facebook's targeting isn't quite good enough). After seeing two, I went looking and found more, all following the same cookie cutter format "The Real <insert candidate name here>". I only looked for New York State Senate candidates. How much more widespread is this? I wouldn't be surprised to find this in other states or other races too. I appears professionally done. This isn't small potatoes, there's a major effort by someone behind all of these.
Here's more I discovered:
Anonymous attack ad targeting Adam Haber (D, NY Senate District 7)
Anonymous attack ad targeting George Latimer (D, NY Senate District 37)
Anonymous attack ad targeting Justin Wagner (D, NY Senate District 40)
The following is the first one that appeared in my news feed. I posted a comment complaining about the lack of disclosure, and I got blocked. Note unlike all the other ads, there's no "Message" or "Write something" choice, indicating I'm blocked. Only supportive comments are allowed to remain.
Anonymous attack ad targeting Terry Gipson (D, NY Senate District 41)
Anonymous attack ad targeting Cecilia Tckazyk (D, NY Senate District 46)
Anonymous attack ad targeting Ted O'Brien (D, NY Senate District 55)
Anonymous attack ad targeting Marc Panepinto (D, NY Senate District 60)
Anonymous attack ad targeting Elaine Altman (D, NY Senate District 61)
Those for candidates near me appear as sponsored posts in my Facebook news feed, I presume the others are appearing as sponsored posts in other areas.
Is there anyone who could force the sponsors out in the open? Board of Elections? Attorney General? The campaigns themselves? I expect it could take legal action, possibly by forcing Facebook to reveal who is paying, or holding Facebook themselves accountable for accepting payment to distribute these.
I'll also bet these ads will promptly disappear when polls close, making further investigations difficult.