The latest Facebook battleground for directed ads - the Irish abortion referendum

[muriel_volestrangler]

Initial polls - keeping in mind it's still early in the campaign - point towards a win for the pro-choice side. An Ipsos MRBI poll in January showed that 56% of 1,200 people sampled were in favour of repealing the amendment (the "yes" side in the referendum), while 29% were opposed.
...
But there's another indicator which potentially points to a closer race than that shown by recent polls. According to one broad survey, pro-life paid adverts on Facebook are getting far more engagement than those promoting the opposite side.

The Transparent Referendum Initiative (TRI) is encouraging Irish voters to use crowdsourcing tools developed by social media political monitoring group Who Targets Me. They've created a database of Facebook paid adverts, including boosted posts and so-called "dark adverts" - those which are only seen by the intended audience, and generally not seen by the rest of Facebook users.
...
A Canadian pro-life group called Choice 42 posted a video challenging the pro-choice slogan "my body, my choice". Overall, this post was shared more than two thousand times, although it's unclear how many of those were shares came from inside the Republic of Ireland.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-43758286

[smirkymonkey]

1. I really hope Ireland goes pro-choice.

It's about time they step out of the dark ages as far as the abortion question is concerned.

[dembotoz]

2. it serves as a reminder that the lying bastards may be better at social media than we are.