Concerns have been raised over outside influences impacting the result of the public vote
As the vote to decide whether or not the Eight-Amendment will be repealed from the Irish constitution draws nearer, campaigning efforts from both sides continue to push their cases.
However, as with any vote or election, measures must be taken to ensure they do so in a fair and legal fashion.
With only two weeks to go until the ballots are counted, the influence of foreign-funded campaigns – both political and religious – have been highlighted as having the potential to influence the result.
As has been well documented, Google have yesterday decided to ban ALL advertisements in relation to the vote. While Facebook will ban only ad's from with foreign origin.
Here is the reasoning the companies themselves have given.
In a statement, facebook said: “Concerns have been raised about organisations and individuals based outside of Ireland trying to influence the outcome of the referendum on the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution of Ireland by buying ads on Facebook,” adding it was “an issue [Facebook had] been thinking about for some time.”
“Today, as part of our efforts to help protect the integrity of elections and referendums from undue influence, we will begin rejecting ads related to the referendum if they are being run by advertisers based outside of Ireland.”
Facebook stressed that “the spirit of this approach [was] also consistent with Irish electoral law that prohibits campaigns from accepting foreign donations.”
The social network said it would rely on the efforts of both political parties and campaigners (on both sides) to “bring concerns about ad campaigns” to their attention.
“We will also be using machine learning to help us with this effort to identify ads that should no longer be running,” the Social Media giant said.
In comparison, Google is taking no chances - and placing an all-out advert ban about the referendum.
“Following our update around election integrity efforts globally, we have decided to pause all ads related to the Irish referendum on the eighth amendment,” said a Google spokesperson.
They added: “As part of our efforts to help protect the integrity of elections and referendums from undue influence, we will begin rejecting ads related to the referendum if they are being run by advertisers based outside of Ireland.”
