Two weeks before Lok Sabha phase 3 voting, surrogates flooded Meta with communal political ads

Two weeks before the third phase of voting in the Lok Sabha elections on May 7, the top 20 advertisers on Meta platforms paid Facebook and Instagram nearly Rs 17 crore to run political advertisements. At least 30 of these advertisements, paid for by surrogate accounts, had communal undertones that primarily targeted the minority community.

Of the top 20 spenders between April 23 and May 6, 15 were paid for by surrogate accounts and five by political parties, who advertised from their official Facebook and Instagram pages.

In the two weeks before the May 7 voting, the BJP spent the highest amount (Rs 5.63 crore) on political ads on Meta platforms, followed by the Congress (Rs 4.81 crore) and an affiliate page of the Biju Janata Dal called Ama Chinha Sankha Chinha (Rs 2.15 crore). Phir Ek Baar Modi Sarkar and Manamodi, two surrogate accounts with a history of running pro-BJP ads, spent the fourth (Rs 57.64 lakh) and fifth (Rs 42.17 lakh) highest amounts on political ads respectively. These surrogate accounts outspent political parties like the Telugu Desam Party (Rs 32.16 lakh) and the Trinamool Congress (Rs 23.84 lakh), which, apart from the Congress and the BJD-affiliate page, were the only non-BJP supporting advertisers among the top 20 spenders.

The Indian Express had earlier reported how a number of surrogate advertisers had placed pro-BJP ads on Meta platforms in the run-up to the first phase of voting (April 19). Many advertisers flagged by this paper then had placed ads with communal overtones. According to Meta’s policy, political advertisers on Facebook and Instagram are required to provide their phone numbers before placing the ads. However, the phone numbers shared by these advertisers that The Indian Express