Chinese based social media company has been flouting Canada’s new elections rules by allowing Conservatives election ads to run without setting up a digital ad registry as required by law, CBC News has learned.
To combat foreign interference in Canada election, parliament recently added new provisions to the Canada Elections Act (CEA) that define online platforms and impose obligations on them with respect to digital ad registries.
The law demands that online advertising company must keep and publish a digital registry of all regulated ads and the name of the person who authorized the ad and Ads must be included in the registry on the day they are first displayed.
These requirements apply to any website or application that sells ad space on the site or application, whether the sale is direct or indirect. In other words, the definition of “online platform” captures any website or application where regulated advertising is displayed.
WeChat’s owner, Tencent, says election ads aren’t running on its popular WeChat social media site and it has not set up an ad registry in Canada.
“WeChat does not accept or support political ads on its platform,” spokeswoman Lisa Kennedy wrote in a statement.
Trudeau has denied the Liberals have any plans to legalize hard drugs. The Liberals said they are advertising on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, but not on WeChat.
This ad is similar to one discovered last week on Facebook, sponsored also by the conservatives and was later taken down as it violates Facebook’s ad rules.