Political campaigns are targeting you on Facebook. Help us find out how.

Around 23million Canadians use Facebook every month, and with elections looming in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick and a federal campaign next year, those users will no doubt be besieged by political ads on the social media platform.

But unlike on TV and radio, political ads online are not strictly regulated.

They're alsotargeted at individual users or narrow demographic groups, making it difficult for the public to get an overview of the full rangeof ads being usedin political campaigns and harder for media and watchdog groups to fact check the claims being made in those ads.

And despite recent efforts by Facebook to be more transparent about advertising on its site, it's not always easy to identify who is behind a political ad.

Which is why CBC News is teaming upwith ProPublica, a U.S. non-profit news organization,to investigate political ads on Facebook.

But we need your help.

By installing a browser extension called Facebook Political Ad Collector developed by ProPublica, CBC readers can help journalists get a better picture of the scope of political ads that Facebook users across Canadaare seeing.

How it works

Theextension can be downloadedfrom either theChrome Web Storeor theMozilla Add-ons Store and addedto aChrome or Firefox browser on your desktop or laptop computer. The tool won't work inother browsers such as Safari and Internet Explorer or on mobile devices.

Once it's installed, each time a paidadvertisement pops up in your news feed while you have Facebook open on a desktop or laptop, you'll be asked toclassify the ad as political or not.

Thatinformation willbe fed into adatabase of political ads that can be analyzed byCBC and other news organizations and help us dig up and research news stories.

The information in the database is crowdsourced, so the more people who use the extension, the more entrieswill appear in the database and the more news stories CBC will be able to tell.

• Install Facebook Political Ad Collectoron Chrome
• Install Facebook Political Ad Collector on Firefox

The database will also include the targeting information that Facebook users see when they click on "Why am I seeing this?"under the three dots in the top right corner of sponsored posts.

Once you have the extension, you will also be able to see ads targeted at other Canadian userswho have installed it and who may fit a different political or demographicprofile.

What the extension won't capture, however, areposts by partisan groups or individuals that might serve as de factopolitical contentbut are not paid advertisements per se. It only captures posts marked "sponsored."

How will CBCusethe ad information collected?

CBChopes the information gleaned from the political ads submitted by Facebookusers will enhance our political and election coverage and generate story ideas ofpublic interest.

Thetool helped ProPublica exposepolitical ads that were scams or malwareand ads from the 2016 election campaigns of Donald Trump and Hillary Clintonthatviolateddisclosure rules.The organization has made its crowdsourceddatabase of U.S. political ads publicly accessibleon its website.

In Australia, the Guardian newspaper foundcontroversial adsusing the ad collector during that country's referendum on same-sex marriage that may haveviolated campaign rules. The paper also posted the fulldatabase of collected ads online.

The New York Times used a similartype of crowdsourcingtoolto monitor political ads on Facebook in the 2016 U.S. election, and developers in Britain used the same principle to create the Who Targets Me? extension during the 2017 U.K. election.

In addition toCBCand the Globe and Mail in Canada, other media organizations thatare usingProPublica'sad collector include: Italy'sOpenpolis; DieRepublikin Switzerland; Der Spiegel, Suedeutsche Zeitungand Tagesschauin Germany; Dutch Public broadcasting; and Information in Denmark.

Protecting your privacy

Obviously, given recent controversies about Facebook data collection, we want to ensure your privacy is protected. The extension will not collect names, personal details or any other data that could be used to identify you.

Only information on paid ads is collected.

"The tool does not collect any personally identifiable information, and will not learn which ads are shown to which user or which user voted on what ad," saysProPublica, whichmanages and controls the database.

What the tool collects:

• Basic information about each ad, such as the Facebook ad identification number and the datethe ad appeared in the system.
• Targeting information that appears withthe ad criteria such as age and location that is used to determine which ads get shown to which users.This information is not connected to any data that could be used to identify a user.

What thetool does NOT collect:

• Personally identifiable information from the collected ads, including Facebook ID numbers and tracking identifiers, or pixels, which can be used to identify users.
• Names and profile links of the user's friends who have liked the ad and any comments on the ad.

Learn more about the tool

When you install the extension, you will be able to review ProPublica's terms of use before completing the installation. In the meantime, you can:

• Find out more about thetool and ProPublica's privacy policies.
• Review the source code for the ad collector, whichis open source and available to the public.
• ReadCBC's strict rules on privacy.
• EmailProPublicawith your questions at adcollector@propublica.org.

Watch the Facebook Political Ad Collector in action:

How to help CBC track Facebook ads

6 years ago

Duration 0:50

Learn more about CBC's effort to track political ads on Facebook through crowdsourcing.