<https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/wj9mny/facebooks-political-ad-tool-let-u...> Last year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said making political advertising more transparent was one of the most important things the company would do after it was revealed Russians used the platform to attempt to manipulate the 2016 presidential election. But according to a small test run by VICE News, one of the new features Facebook rolled out this year is easily subject to manipulation. In May, Facebook added a mandatory “Paid For” disclosure for every ad that relates to politics or what Facebook calls an “issue of national importance.” The idea is to lift the veil on the kind of inflammatory ads placed by anonymous advertisers that plagued Facebook during the 2016 race. But when VICE News placed ads on behalf of prominent political figures such as Vice President Mike Pence, and Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez, Facebook quickly approved them. We also tried submitting an ad on behalf of “Islamic State,” which was also approved by Facebook. We were able to get Facebook’s approval for political ads that included these names within the Paid For disclosure. 1540484870860-facebook_ads-ad_comparison_02-highlight Using “Hillary Clinton” in the Paid For disclosure was denied by Facebook, but that didn’t prevent us from continuing to place political ads under other false names and bogus PACs. Facebook didn’t explain to VICE News why Hillary Clinton was denied. To be able to submit political ads on Facebook, we were required to submit a valid ID and proof of residence. That means Facebook knew who was behind the ads internally, but externally, Facebook users would see was completely made up Paid For information. After placing the ads, we reached out to Facebook, which said the ads should have never been approved. “Inaccurate disclaimers have no place on Facebook and these ads are no longer running,” said Rob Leathern, who leads Business Integrity product management team at Facebook. “Our goal is to increase transparency on Facebook and prevent foreign interference elections which is why we have implemented the authorization process and released the Ad Archive. Enforcement isn’t perfect - and we won't stop all people trying to game the system - but we have made it much harder and we will continue to improve.” A Facebook spokesperson told VICE News the company is developing closer relationships with election authorities who could flag potentially non-compliant disclaimers. Facebook also said that no foreign advertisers are permitted to place political ads in the U.S., but that didn’t stop VICE News from using exact copies of ads that were run by Russian agents during their 2016 disinformation campaign. Facebook told VICE News that the actual content of these ads did not violate its rules, only the fabricated Paid For disclosures. We made sure the ad that said it was Paid For by Mike Pence, which was approved, actually never actually ran on Facebook. [...]