Facebook is blocking all foreign spending on advertising around Ireland’s upcoming referendum on abortion in an effort to adhere to the “principles” of the country’s election spending laws.

With just over two weeks to go until the 25 May vote on liberalising Ireland’s strict abortion laws, Facebook announced it would restrict advertising to organisations and people based in the Republic. The move follows accusations that attempts have been made to swing votes across the world through foreign-funded campaigns and so-called astroturfing.

“This is an issue we have been thinking about for some time,” Facebook said. “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.”

As part of the process, Ireland has also became the first country outside the US to receive a set of advertiser-transparency tools Facebook promised in early in April. “Our view ads feature – which enables Irish Facebook users to see all of the ads any advertiser is running on Facebook in Ireland at the same time – has been fast tracked and is operational today,” the company said.

Abortion has long been a divisive issue in Ireland. Voters will be asked whether they want to repeal article 40.3.3 – known as the eighth amendment – which enshrined a ban on abortion in the Irish constitution in 1983.

Facebook said other features promised last month have also been fast-tracked in order to launch them in the run-up to the vote.

“What we are now doing for the referendum on the eighth amendment will allow us to operate as though these tools, which are not yet fully available, were in place today with respect to foreign referendum-related advertising,” it said.



The delay in launching the feature, and the short time left in the campaign, led to criticism of the company.

“Facebook are always late to the party,” said Gavin Sheridan, an Irish social media expert who has been following the digital side of the referendum campaign. “They were late with Russian interference in the US election … All their announcements seem designed to stave off regulation, and for me it boils down to do we allow them to self-regulate, or do we regulate ourselves.”

Facebook said it would be working directly with political parties and campaign groups on both sides of the vote, who are being asked to notify the company “if they have concerns about ad campaigns”. It added: “We will then assess and act on those reports. We will also be using machine learning to help us with this effort to identify ads that should no longer be running.”

Irish law bars foreign money from going to political parties and registered campaigns. But the legislation does not cover money spent directly on digital advertising, a loophole that observers say has been exploited by groups overseas wishing to influence the vote.

The Transparent Referendum Initiative has been tracking online advertising around the vote. Two weeks ago Liz Carolan, its founder, said her group “had picked up 144 different pages paying for ads at one point in time over the last few months”.

As for who is paying for those ads, said Sheridan, “the only people who know that for certain are Facebook themselves”.

He and Carolan welcomed Facebook’s move and pointed out that Google and its subsidiary YouTube had yet to make any similar commitment. “We are receiving large numbers of screengrabs indicating spend on advertising on these platforms happening under the radar,” Carolan said. “Yet we have even less information on these advertisements than we do on Facebook ads.”