Help Us Collect Political Ads on Facebook

Note to Self | Feb 7, 2018

ProPublica reporter Julia Angwin is collecting political ads on Facebook, all across the country. Just in case someone needs to check on them later. Like if the Russians bought thousands of ads to sway an election. And she needs your help.

She and her team built a browser plugin that collects ads from Facebook, and asks users like you to decide if the ads are political or not. Ads marked as political are gathered into a giant database - the only repository of these ads available to the public.

The last time Julia gave us an assignment, tens of thousands of you helped her reveal racist ad categories and potentially illegal housing discrimination on Facebook. Then Facebook worked hard to fix that. We made change. Let’s do it again. To start submitting political ads you see, download the plugin for Firefox or Chrome.

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