Talk of a second Brexit referendum has created a surge in sketchy Facebook ads

Earlier this month, Open Democracy raised the alarm about a cluster of Facebook pages that were publishing ads supportive of no-deal Brexit, while providing very little information on who was behind the organisations nominally paying for the posts. One could again lay the blame on Facebook’s doorstep: publishing political ads on the platform only requires a British or EU identity document and a UK bank account. But the problem runs deeper. It has to do, for instance, with the British Electoral Commission’s utter toothlessness when it comes to supervising digital campaigning, let alone forcing an organisation to reveal its backers.