Ireland: Preparing for the 2024 general elections

As you prepare for the upcoming 2024 Irish general elections, it’s important to know how you can keep your accounts secure, effectively reach and engage your supporters and potential voters throughout all stages of your campaign and adhere to our policies.

In preparation for the elections, we’ve put together a list of important tips to keep top of mind.

Getting started across Meta technologies

Set up your campaign’s Facebook Page.

Your Facebook Page will allow you to reach and engage the people you care about: your community, supporters and potential voters. A Facebook Page is separate from your personal Facebook profile that you use to connect with friends and family. With a Page, you have access to advertising so that you can amplify your message and Page Insights so that you can measure the effectiveness of your content.

Connect with your community through WhatsApp.

WhatsApp allows your campaign to engage at scale, creating efficiency for you and convenience for your communities. Learn more about setting up your WhatsApp presence and what WhatsApp is doing to protect elections.

Be present on Instagram.

Instagram is a place where you can inspire your community and showcase the passion that drives your campaign. When setting up your Instagram presence, you will need a business account to be able to use advanced features similar to those available for a Facebook Page.

Help secure your accounts.

To help protect your information and keep your accounts and the Pages you manage secure, we recommend you follow our security practices outlined in this guide, which includes:

• Turning on two-factor authentication
• Taking the security and privacy check ups
• Making sure your information, such as the email address on file, is up to date

Building community

An organic presence across Meta technologies is important for you to connect with your supporters and potential voters. When creating content, we found that focusing on the following three actions work best: engage, educate and excite.

Engage

Engaging with your audience is the cornerstone of building community while also educating them at the same time. You can engage your community by:

• Going Live on Facebook or Instagram.
• Creating a Group.
• Communicating with supporters using Messenger or WhatsApp.
• Liking and replying to comments.
• Asking questions in Facebook or Instagram Stories.

Educate

Answer questions from your supporters, explain what makes your campaign different or special and take people behind the scenes of your day.

Excite

After engaging and educating your supporters, think about how to get them to keep coming back. You can be creative at this stage whether it’s creating Reels on Facebook or Instagram or launching an event.

Increase transparency.

We're constantly working to increase ad transparency and election integrity across Meta. Therefore, we've established measures to promote authenticity and legitimacy for anyone wishing to run ads about social issues, elections or politics.

Advertisers who want to create or edit ads about social issues, elections or politics will need to go through the authorisation process and place "Paid for by" disclaimers on ads. This includes any person creating, modifying, publishing, or pausing ads that reference political figures, political parties or elections. These ads will enter the Ad Library and be available for 7 years. This helps provide more transparency for people who see the ad and disclose who is trying to influence them.

Complete the ad authorisation process to run ads about social issues, elections or politics.

Getting authorised is simple:

Step 1: Confirm your identity

Go to this page and select “Ireland” from the dropdown menu to see country-specific instructions on how to confirm your identity. Please make sure that you follow the instructions under the category that is most relevant to you.

Before starting the process, two-factor authentication must be turned on. Then, you can confirm your identity by submitting an official identification document (National ID, passport, driving license, etc.). Please note that identity confirmation is at the individual level.

Remember to use your full name as it appears on your valid IDs. Your name and other details should be clearly visible on those documents. Your ID documents will be reviewed within 48 hours. If your ID is rejected, you will receive a message or notification letting you know why. Common reasons for this include:

• Naming mismatch - e.g., if the last name on your government ID that you uploaded does not match the last name on your Facebook profile.
• Problem with ID photo - e.g., if there is a glare on your ID or if the edges are not visible. Please ensure the ID photo has a white background with all four corners within the picture.

If you receive a notification saying that your identity couldn't be confirmed using the information you provided, you can see more details by going to www.facebook.com/id.

Step 2: Create a disclaimer

All ads about social issues, elections or politics need to have a disclaimer. This disclaimer will appear at the top of any ads you run and include information on the entity that paid for the ad, e.g. “Sponsored - Paid for by Vote for Samantha Weber”. Please visit this page to see how you can create and use a disclaimer.

Disclaimer should accurately represent the name of the entity or person responsible for the ad.

Advertisers have two options to get a “Paid for by” disclaimer:

Option 1: A self-declared organisation name (requires a street address, phone number, email, and matching website)

• Have accurate and valid information at all times.
• Don’t include profanity, objectionable language or unrecognisable words or phrases.
• Don’t include URLs or acronyms, unless URLs or acronyms make up the name of the organisation, which must also be accurately reflected on the website provided.
• Don’t wrongfully imply that your ads are paid for by, with or on behalf of Facebook.
• Don’t include “Paid for by” language that duplicates the same language provided by Facebook.

Option 2: Page name

• Advertisers that don’t have a website or a related email address that matches the website domain can use the "Page Name" disclaimer option. This will allow advertisers to display an eligible Page Name on ads about elections or politics.
• You’ll be required to provide a local mail-deliverable business address, verifiable local phone number and verifiable email address.
• When choosing to use the Page Name option, the name displayed in the disclaimer will be pre-populated with the name of your Page and can't be edited.
• Only Pages that are more than 30 days old are eligible for this option.

Step 3:

Link your disclaimer to an eligible ad account.

Step 4:

When setting up your ad in Ads Manager, please select “Social issues, elections or politics” in the Special Ad Categories section at the campaign-level.

For any support needs including account problems, technical issues and advertisement, you can reach out to our dedicated team.

Disclosure requirements about digitally created or altered media

In addition to above-mentioned requirements, advertisers are now required to disclose whenever a social issue, electoral or political ad contains a photorealistic image or video, or realistic sounding audio, that was digitally created or altered to:

• Depict a real person as saying or doing something that they did not say or do; or
• Depict a realistic-looking person that does not exist or a realistic-looking event that did not happen, or alter footage of a real event that happened; or
• Depict a realistic event that allegedly occurred, but that is not a true image, video or audio recording of the event.

For more detailed information about this policy, visit the Business Help Center.

Promoting safety across Meta technologies

At Meta, we’re committed to giving people a voice and keeping them safe. We have policies that describe what is and isn’t allowed on our technologies. Our teams work together to develop our policies and enforce them. Learn about how we remove violating content and reduce the spread of misinformation on our website.

Understand, identify and report hate speech.

We define hate speech as a direct attack against people on the basis of what we call protected characteristics: race, ethnicity, national origin, disability, religious affiliation, caste, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity and serious disease. Meta does not tolerate these attacks.

As you engage your supporters and potential voters on our platforms, you can help us identify and quickly remove hate speech by reporting it.

1. Click the three dots next to the post you’d like to mark as hate speech.
2. Click “Find support or report post.”
3. Select “Hate speech” and the applicable characteristic.
4. Confirm and file report.

Combating misinformation

We’re taking significant steps to fight the spread of misinformation using a three-part strategy – remove content that violates our Community Standards, reduce distribution of stories marked as false and inform people so they can decide what to read, trust and share.

We rely on independent fact-checkers to review and rate the accuracy of stories through original reporting, which may include interviewing primary sources, consulting public data and conducting analyses of media, including photos and video.

As a reminder, under our policies, content, including ads, from politicians is not eligible for review by our third-party fact-checking partners.

For more information about how to use Meta technologies, visit our resource center. If you have additional questions or technical issues, you can reach out to Meta Support Pros for support.

Please consult your political activities counsel with questions specific to your jurisdiction.