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Yes, it's difficult to follow exactly what they did. This: > We used 10 fake Facebook pages with no content, and changed the “paid for” disclosure after each s

Yes, it's difficult to follow exactly what they did. This: > We used 10 fake Facebook pages with no content, and changed the “paid for” disclosure after each senator was approved. Makes it sound to me like they got approval using a real identity and then changed the now-approved account to use a different name. Methodology aside, though, Facebook shouldn't be showing that they verified the identity if they did not verify the identity. Unless the methodology was "we stole the identities of some senators" or "we cracked their passwords", this is a failure a another breach of trust on Facebook's part.

gopher2 8y ago
Based on other's comments in the thread about having their advertisements not approved by FB, it sounds like Facebook does have an approval process that is greater than just "literally not Mark Zuckerberg". However, Vice got around this by getting an ad approved and then editing (changing entirely?) the name and other properties of the ad. Maybe Facebook should re-approve ads when certain properties change? It's definitely impersonation... I'm not sure what officially constitutes stealing an identity. I'd be curious how this experiment of impersonating a senator and buying advertising would go across print/billboards/reddit/other platforms. Maybe Vice will try some more experiments.