Comments by "SmallSpoonBrigade" (@SmallSpoonBrigade) on "Facebook Fined $25M for Violating State Campaign Law" video.

It's generally like that in Wa as well, the problem is that the groups that are paying for them are increasingly hard to match up to a particular interest group. We had a bunch of ads from "the congressional leadership fund" or some such nonsense and you can't really know who that is without seeing the ads. Then the inference is that it's some sort of right wing group, but who even knows who they're being funded by and for what purpose.
3
It's actually pretty easy to comply with this, they simply just don't allow ads covering races in the state of Washington, and to IPs located there. It's not particularly hard with all the information that Meta collects to know where the ads are being viewed. Now, if this case centered on VPN use or they didn't know who was using the service, a different result might be called for, but not in this case. It seems pretty clear that they aren't putting up any particularly serious effort to avoid breaking the law.
2
It's also worth recognizing that since this action comes after the elections that were affected that it won't serve as a deterrent to people trying to use FB to skirt the law.
1
I was going to buy some facebook ads years ago, but it made me show them my driver's license to confirm my identity. No way in hell am I scanning a copy of my driver's license and giving it to them.
1
Probably not, but they could screen against the names of candidates in the state as well as ones that are relevant to measures up for vote. It's not particularly hard as they pretty much just need to get enough of it to remove the incentive to try.
1