Following the revelations of foreign social media interference during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the Irish referendum was widely seen as a test for social media companies’ ability to protect voters from election meddling. Some social media companies, such as Facebook and Google, had taken action and previously introduced tools to improve transparency. Indeed, eventually, Facebook blocked political advertising from groups outside Ireland altogether. Google soon joined this effort and also banned all adverts relating to the referendum on its platforms, including YouTube. Unlike the other tech companies, Twitter did not take special measures to protect Irish voters from social media manipulation. Abhishek Dasgupta, Monica Kaminska, and Takis Metaxas followed and analysed the online conversation about the contentious Irish abortion referendum.
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