Next year's Scottish Parliament elections run the risk of being skewed by "unscupulous campaigners" spreading "dark ads" online.
Democracy campaigners have warned that it will be easy for those who wish to sway the debate to hide who their backers are in online campaign material, and have called on the Scottish Government to tighten the rules.
Regulations come into effect in Scotland on Monday December 7th which aim to ensure that political campaign material must clearly state who is behind it.
But unlike printed campaign literature, online election campaign material isn’t currently required to have an ‘imprint’ stating who is publishing it throughout.
This raises the risk that when the image or video is inevitably shared on, voters will not know who is pushing the material.
Many people will see political campaign info on social media
Democracy groups The Electoral Reform Society Scotland and fair Vote UK say the current situation is aking to including an imprint on a leaflet’s envelope, but not the leaflet itself.
Now the groups and academics have written to the Minister for Parliamentary Business and Veterans, Graeme Dey, to express their concerns.
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Willie Sullivan, Director of Electoral Reform Society Scotland, added: “While we welcome Scottish government action to end ‘dark ads’, these rules need tightening to protect a free and fair debate.
"Voters must know who is trying to influence our political debate. We hope the government looks again at this potential loophole in advance of the Holyrood elections.”
Kyle Taylor, Founder and Director of Fair Vote UK, added: “This loophole means the efficacy of the digital imprints is severely limited.
"Transparency information on campaign videos could "disappear" the moment someone downloads and re-shares it.
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"It would be like putting an imprint on a leaflet as a tear-away strip that you just remove and then share again. This is the most basic aspect of digital imprints - that they be embedded on the image/in the video, as is legally required in the USA for TV ads.”
A spokesman for the Scottish Government said: “We have led the way on digital imprints, introducing regulation of digital materials for the 2021 Scottish Parliament Election – the first such regulation for a UK election – to ensure that all online materials, including videos, can be traced to source.
“If an election video contains text, or appears within material containing text, there must now be an imprint unless the person sharing the video is covered by the exemption for people expressing their personal opinion.
“This legislation will be kept under review, and we will respond to the letter in due course.”
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