Facebook temporarily turned on a new feature that enabled users to see previously hidden information about a page, such as when it was created, how many people manage it, and where those people are based. This new information was briefly shown in a box called "Page History" that was part of the ad transparency product the company is currently testing in Canada ahead of a rollout in the US in advance of the 2018 midterm elections.

However, after being contacted about the Page History box by BuzzFeed News, Facebook turned off the entire "View Ads" product in Canada. It did not initially respond to questions about why the feature was turned off, but the company's VP of local, Alex Himel, tweeted after this story was published, "We mistakenly launched an early test to people in Canada and Ireland. We are still working on the product so have since rolled it back."

He said Page History will go live "in the coming weeks."

Rob Leathern, a director of product management in charge of ads, told BuzzFeed News that the early release of Page History led to the “rolling back ads transparency in those countries for a few hours, which will be back online shortly."

The short-lived rollout of Page History comes after the Facebook announced last month its intention to offer users "additional context about Pages to effectively assess their content."

Prior to Page History and the View Ads features being turned off, BuzzFeed News reporters in Canada examined the information for several pages in order to see where their managers are based, and whether the pages had changed names over time. The result is that BuzzFeed News was able to confirm that several pro-Trump pages are wholly or partially run by people in countries such as Macedonia, Mexico, Spain, Pakistan, and India.

The review of pages also found that someone in Switzerland is a manager of the InfoWars page, and that many large pages about Native Americans are operated by people in Vietnam and Kosovo. These findings follow previous BuzzFeed News reporting about pro-Trump pages run by spammers in Macedonia, as well as the slew of people in Kosovo and Vietnam running Native American pages.

The information gathered from Page History also reinforces the overall trend of information targeted at Americans being created or curated by people based overseas.

Facebook did not respond to questions asking how the location of managers is determined, but interviews with two page owners suggests the company is using IP addresses to determine the location information.

Here's a look at the pages reviewed by BuzzFeed News prior to Facebook turning off the feature.