Eurasia Press & News
Political ads paid for by anonymous ‘dark money’ were viewed more than 50 million times ahead of Albania’s April parliamentary election, according to data analysed by BIRN.
hree weeks ahead of Albania’s fiercely contested parliamentary election in April, a Facebook page entitled ‘Untold Stories of Albania’, ran an excerpt from a TV interview with Lulzim Basha, leader of the opposition Democratic Party, in which the journalist says jokingly that Basha’s “napping” has become a campaign issue.
“It’s my routine. I nap,” Basha appears to respond. “Like me, the Democratic Party has been napping from dawn till dusk.”
The video, which includes several frames of a man sleeping in the fetal position on a leather couch, appears staged. In essence, it was, but it still received 203,844 views on Facebook, an impressive tally for the little more than $300 spent to promote it on Facebook, via on account with just 1,833 followers.
The video was a crude example of a ‘deep fake’, a video that portrays someone saying something they didn’t. And it was not the only political attack ad run by Untold Stories of Albania and targeting Basha and other opposition leaders before the April 25 vote that was won by the ruling Socialist of Prime Minister Edi Rama.
In fact, the page ran a total of 218 political ads from between December and the eve of the vote, registering millions of views. With the Socialist victory secured, it stopped posting.
Its disclaimer states that the adverts were paid for by Untold Stories of Albania, but no such entity exists and the Ad Library report published by Facebook gives no clue as to who owns the page and who or what funds it.
Using Facebook data obtained via Crowdtangle, an application owned by the social media giant, BIRN was able to identify five similar Facebook pages that registered tens of millions of video views ahead of the Albanian election but have only a few thousand followers.
Since the funding source for such ads is not known, the money is a form of political spending often referred to as ‘dark money’.
Such anonymity encourages political actors to push the boundaries of democratic norms, said Anthony Nadler, associate professor of Media and Communications Studies at Ursinus College in Pennsylvania.
“When the source of funding behind an ad campaign is not identified, there’s no one to fear being held accountable if ads are manipulative, foster hatred, or spread misinformation,” he said.
“In addition, dark money allows for advertisers to engage in efforts to impersonate other interest groups, perhaps for the purpose of spurring division or misdirection among their opponents.”
BIRN tried without success to reach the administrators of Untold Stories of Albania via Facebook messenger and email. Facebook did not respond to a request for comment.
Dark money ads a worldwide problem
The Socialist Party of Prime Minister Edi Rama won an unprecedented third successive term in office in the April election, taking 74 of parliament’s 140 seats.
Due in part to COVID-19 restrictions, much of the campaign played out on social media.
“The electoral campaign was held under COVID-19 conditions, when travel and physical participation in events was restricted,” said Afrim Krasniqi, executive director of the Albania Institute of Political studies, a Tirana-based think-tank.
“As a result, online communications and advertising had a larger audience than mainstream media and in-person communication.”
In early March, Facebook – the most popular social network in Albania with an estimated 1.6 million users – made it mandatory for accounts in Albanian running political and social issue ads to register with its Ad Transparency tool.
According to data from Facebook’s Ads Library report, political parties and MP candidates spent nearly $300,000 on political ads from March 11 to the eve of the election.
Included in this sum was the spending of accounts like Untold Stories of Albania, which spent $16,003 on Facebook and Instagram ads during this period. But who or what actually provided the money remains a mystery.
Dark money ads are a problem not only in Albanian elections. According to Nadler, even in the United States, funding from dark money groups continues to be an issue in spite of all the steps taken by big tech firms.
“Facebook and Google have taken some steps to verify the identity of legal entities sponsoring ads in order to crack down on foreign actors founding political ads,” he said. “But there’s been no effort that I’m aware of to prevent targeted advertising from dark money groups that are US entities, with no legal obligation to offer transparency about their major funders.”
Israeli connection
Untold Stories of Albania started ramping up its video viewership in December 2020.
According to data obtained through Crowdtangle, between December 2020 and April 2021, Untold Stories of Albania published 44 videos that were viewed 3.75 million times.
Using Crowdtangle, BIRN was able to identify five other Facebook pages that published political ads and registered an unusually high video view rate in the pre-election period, despite having only a few thousand followers.
They include ‘Corapja’, which translates as ‘the sock’, a political satire page that with only 6,839 followers was nonetheless able to rack up 11.7 million video views from September 2020 to February 2021.
Another called ‘Pakez Drite’, which promoted government projects in rural tourism but also ran attack ads against the opposition, registered 18.25 million views yet has only 5,326 followers.
‘Pune Pune’, which translates ‘Work Work’, has just 1,364 followers, but its political ads were viewed 7.9 million times.
All three pages were created on the same day – September 3, 2020.
Two other pages created on November 11 and 13, 2020 – ‘Ligj dhe Rend’ and ‘Te Jesh Grua’ – had similar success. The former, which translates as ‘Law and Order’, registered 3.39 million views while having just 896 followers, while ‘Te Jesh Grua’, or ‘Being a Woman’, had roughly double that number of video views but only 1,785 followers.
A word analysis of more than 800 ads runs by these social media pages shows that they often included political messages used during the campaign by the ruling Socialist Party, including terms such as “third mandate”, “work not sleep”, ‘no time to rest’, ‘vote SP’ or ‘vote12’.
In total, according to Crowdtangle data, the six identified ‘dark money’ Facebook pages, including Untold Stories of Albania, registered 51.44 million video views between September 2020 and Election Day, a toll that is 18 times higher than the population of Albania, 2.8 million.
The listed phone numbers of the Facebook pages were not in service, while attempts to contact them via Facebook messenger and email went unanswered.
According to the Facebook Ads Library Report, from March 11 until the eve of the vote, the six Facebook pages spent a total of $36,810 on political ads.
The unusually high number of video views and the political messaging in favour of the ruling Socialist Party are not the only things linking the six.
According to their Transparency Reports, they each have one administrator account with the primary country/location listed as Israel. According to a report published on May 7 by the Times of Israel, no less than eight Israeli political strategists were involved in the Albanian election campaign, working both for the Socialists and the Democrats.
