Facebook took more than four weeks to remove one page that violated the same-sex marriage safeguard laws, according to an Australian Electoral Commission official.
Guardian Australia can also reveal that Australia’s special minister of state, Scott Ryan, met Facebook executives this week to discuss political advertising concerns.
Facebook is embroiled in controversy over the use of advertising in the US election, with investigations into Russian interference examining the role of advertising on the social media network.
“I met with executives from Facebook Australia this week to discuss the need to protect free speech, while ensuring our electoral laws are upheld,” Ryan told Guardian Australia. “While I am confident that Australia’s electoral laws are robust, I am keeping a close eye on developments in the United States and elsewhere.”
In a Senate estimates hearing last week, Paul Pirani, the chief legal officer for the AEC, gave the first details of actions taken under the Marriage Law Survey (Additional Safeguards) Act 2017.
Between 15 September, when the law came into force, and 10 October, the AEC received 615 complaints, with 160 escalated to Pirani for a response. The majority complained of a lack of proper authorisation on advertisements across different types of media.
Pirani singled out dealing with a Facebook page that lacked authorisation as a particularly difficult task.
“There was one matter that I escalated to Facebook, and the lawyers for Facebook went through a process that I understand last week resulted in that particular page being brought down and blocked for access in Australia,” he said.
“The majority of people on Facebook have some details that I’m able to track down, but that was one of the ones where I had to write to the lawyers in Australia for Facebook, who forwarded it to the US, and it took a bit over four weeks for action to be taken.”
While the AEC has acted on at least one anonymous Facebook page, Guardian Australia’s investigation into Facebook advertising has identified a further seven ads that appear to lack proper authorisation, indicating the new law has failed to stop unauthorised material appearing throughout the campaign.
At least one ad was highlighted more than a month ago and was still online at the time of writing. Several of the other ads appear to have been online for the majority of the postal survey campaign period.
Facebook Australia said it was investigating the issue and liaising with the AEC as needed.
“All content that is shared on Facebook must comply with our policies,” it said. “Where content complies with our policies but does not comply with local law, upon being made aware of this, we will restrict access to that content in the country concerned to comply with local law.”
This week Facebook announced it was preparing to roll out new advertising transparency measures, with plans to increase ad visibility and a potential requirement for political advertisements to display the name of the person who paid for the ad.
Enforcing laws that apply to Facebook ads is difficult, as unless the ad itself appears in your feed there’s no way to determine that a post appeared as an ad. It’s also possible to create “dark posts”, which only show up as ads and not as posts.
Guardian Australia has partnered with ProPublica to investigate the use of Facebook ads for political purposes in Australia. You can read more about how to join the project here
