Facebook Boasts It Helped The SNP Win Election In Scotland - FOW 24 NEWS

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Facebook Boasts It Helped The SNP Win Election In Scotland


Facebook boasts it helped the SNP 'achieve an overwhelming victory' in the 2015 General Election...


Facebook has a political unit which boasts that the social media giant helped the SNP storm to a sweeping victory in the 2015 General Election.

The company has a little-known government and politics unit which helps political parties around the world use the site to win and hang on to power.

A dedicated page on Facebook's website claims the media giant played a crucial role in helping the SNP secure their landslide victory.

Nicola Sturgeon's party clinched 56 out of the 59 Scottish seats in 2015 - nearly wiping-out all opposition.

Facebook has set up an SNP 'success story' page on its website aimed at winning over potential advertisers.

It states: 'The political party used a powerful combination of Facebook's targeting and engagement tools to mobilise its supporters and achieve an overwhelming victory in the 2015 UK General Election.'

It describes the SNP as the 'pride of Scotland' and talks about how the party managed to reach 1.24million people through Facebook with the average ad costing less than a penny.





It states: 'Scotland's first majority government, the Scottish National Party (SNP) enjoyed a groundswell of support following the referendum on independence from the UK in September 2014.

'Turning the disappointment of the No vote into opportunity, it set its sights on the 2015 UK General Election.'

It said the SNP saw Facebook as a 'key tool' to connect with grassroots supporters and build the reputation of its leader Miss Sturgeon.

It states: 'The SNP succeeded in turning the referendum defeat and the uncertainty of leadership change into a landslide victory. 




'Winning 56 of the 59 Scottish seats that it contested—over an eight-fold increase—it left the remaining parties with only one seat apiece in Scotland.

'Nicola Sturgeon is now widely considered to be the most powerful woman in the UK, and the SNP is a significant opposition force in Westminster.

'Campaigners across the political spectrum now recognise that using Facebook—and Facebook ads in particular—made a demonstrable difference to the final election result.'

Facebook's government and politics teams is run from Washington by Katie Harbath, a former Republican digital strategist who worked on the former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's 2008 presidential campaign.

She told Bloomberg: 'We're proud to work with the thousands of elected officials around the world who use Facebook as a way to communicate directly with their constituents, interact with voters, and hear about the issues important in their community.'

But the unit has sparked controversy from critics who say it is not right that such a powerful social media giant - which has over 2 billions users - gets so close to political campaigns.

Elizabeth Linder, who ran the Facebook politics unit's Europe, Middle East and Africa efforts until 2016, said: 'It's not Facebook's job, in my opinion, to be so close to any election campaign.'
She said she decided to leave the company in part because she became unhappy with what she saw as increased emphasis on electioneering and campaigns.

Facebook had employees 'embedded' in the offices of Donald Trump's campaign to help his staff create the adverts that won the election.

But Hilary Clinton's campaign turned down a similar offer from the media giant, run by billionaire Mark Zuckerberg.

Details of Facebook's role in election campaigns comes amid concerns that the social media company is being used by states to meddle in elections of rivals.

Russia-backed Facebook posts are said to have reached over 100 million American during the US Presidential race.

And in Britain the parliamentary culture select committee has demanded that Facebook and twitter hand over the details of Russian-backed posts during the Brexit referendum.

Facebook Boasts It Helped The SNP Win Election In Scotland Reviewed by FOW 24 News on December 27, 2017 Rating: 5 Facebook boasts it helped the SNP 'achieve an overwhelming victory' in the 2015 General Election...

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