"Shadowy" Online Ads Are Targeting an American Election Again, This Time in Alabama

Just one of many, many pieces of election disinformation that spread on social media during the 2016 presidential election. Drew Angerer / Getty Images

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The Daily Beast reports:

Three months after Mark Zuckerberg pledged to stop external forces from disproportionately affecting U.S. elections, targeted ads are bombarding voters in a pivotal Senate race.

Those ads are trying to influence the super-close contest in Alabama between Republican Roy Moore and Democrat Doug Jones. Yet as the voting period draws to a close tomorrow, the Daily Beast reports, "none" of Zuckerberg's promises regarding online election ad transparency have taken effect.

Remember: fake, misleading, and hard-to-trace Facebook ads were seen by 10 million people during the last presidential election. Since then, the social media giant's promises to bring more transparency to its online election advertising have yet to materialize anywhere in America.

That of course includes Seattle, where, during our most recent municipal election, more than $650,000 was spent on digital ads targeting voters in races for mayor, city council, and city attorney. Just like in Alabama, political ad transparency from the tech giants was seriously lacking here.

Over the last two weeks, I've tried to get the tech giants to comply with Seattle's clear and tough law on election advertising transparency.

Other media companies already comply with Seattle's law. I'm still waiting to hear back from Facebook, Google, and Twitter on what they plan to do.