The issue with fact-checking Facebook ads vs. TV or newspaper is one of targeting and timing.
Facebook ads can be micro-targeted to the point where they're only seen by a very small audience, which is simply not possible in mainstream TV or newspaper. If you have a misleading campaign on TV (e.g., swift boat stuff on Kerry in '04), that can be recognized and called out (not that the dems were super effective at that then...). However with Facebook, it's much more challenging given the small sample size to (1) see all of the ads people are seeing and (2) figure out who has been exposed to them.
So at the end of the day, it's tougher to identify misinformation, and then if you do identify it it's pretty much impossible to re-message the same audience with the correct info. Add timing to that (many campaigns are only up for 24-48 hours) and you start to see why this is a fundamentally different beast from TV and newspaper ads.
One of the blunter but potentially effective solutions is to have a much larger minimum audience size, which is what Google moved to (although still at a pretty small scale).
Facebook ads can be micro-targeted to the point where they're only seen by a very small audience, which is simply not possible in mainstream TV or newspaper. If you have a misleading campaign on TV (e.g., swift boat stuff on Kerry in '04), that can be recognized and called out (not that the dems were super effective at that then...). However with Facebook, it's much more challenging given the small sample size to (1) see all of the ads people are seeing and (2) figure out who has been exposed to them.
So at the end of the day, it's tougher to identify misinformation, and then if you do identify it it's pretty much impossible to re-message the same audience with the correct info. Add timing to that (many campaigns are only up for 24-48 hours) and you start to see why this is a fundamentally different beast from TV and newspaper ads.
One of the blunter but potentially effective solutions is to have a much larger minimum audience size, which is what Google moved to (although still at a pretty small scale).