Facebook data likely used by Labor to target voters in last election

If you noticed a lot of political ads on your Facebook feed in the last election you may have been targeted by powerful data matching tool that was offered to both of Australia’s major political parties.

An exclusive report from the Sydney Morning Herald has revealed that the powerful tool was offered to both parties, but was turned down by the Liberal party who feared the tool could break the law by transferring voter’s personal details the offshore servers. Fairfax media reports that the Australian Labor party didn’t shy away from using the tool. Representatives from the Labor party refused to tell reporters how long they had used the tool and what sort of data they obtained. Because party representatives have not disclosed the information, it means the party may have used the tool throughout the 2016 election race.

The tool itself is called “advanced matching” and is part of Facebook’s Custom Audience feature. The Custom Audience feature is used often by businesses and political parties to target the specific demographics they want to sell their “product” to, for politicians the main target audience is undecided voters.

What is unsettling about the advanced matching capability is that it can match in-house about voters including names, ages, addresses, emails, phone numbers with the information available on their Facebook pages, which in turn could identify a whole group of swinging voters.

When asked about the tool by Fairfax media a Labor spokesman said in a statement: “A range of different campaign techniques and tools are used for campaigning, from doorknocking to phone banking to online. Labor works with different groups to get our message out, including social media platforms like Facebook.”

“All of our work is in complete compliance with relevant laws, including the Commonwealth Electoral Act, which makes it a criminal offence to misuse information on the electoral roll.”

Facebook has been in hot water recently for its handling of a historic data breach by data London-based elections consultancy, Cambridge Analytica. The consultancy company were condemned on social media after an undercover sting operation caught out senior executives boasting about psychological manipulation, entrapment techniques and fake news campaigns.

The company is also embroiled in an ongoing privacy dispute over the alleged harvesting and use of many Facebook users’ personal data. Many worry that the data was used to influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the Brexit vote. These revelations have hit Facebook hard, so much so that they are ending the week $58bn lower in value, even after an apology by founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Have you noticed a lot of political advertising appearing on your facebook wall? Do you think politicians should be banned from using these sorts of tools around election time?