FACEBOOK claims it helped the SNP clinch a near clean sweep in the 2015 General Election.
The social media giant pointed to the Nationalists’ major "success story" of two years ago when the party won 56 out of the 59 Westminster seats and highlighted its use of Facebook, using headlines such as "the pride of Scotland" and "triggering a landslide".
But the SNP "success story" page on its website, which is aimed at potential advertisers, could open the company up to allegations of partisanship.
It refers to how the Nationalists turned the "disappointment of the No vote" in the 2014 independence referendum into an "opportunity" by capitalising on a "groundswell of support" and leaving the "remaining parties with only one seat apiece in Scotland" a year later.
"The SNP succeeded in turning the referendum defeat and the uncertainty of leadership change into a landslide victory," it declares, adding: "Campaigners across the political spectrum now recognise that using Facebook made a demonstrable difference to the election result."
In the wake of the 2014 result, commentators and politicians often remarked how, while the Nationalists were on the losing side, the political atmosphere felt as if they had won. One consequence was that membership of the SNP soared past the 100,000-mark.
A year after the independence poll Glasgow University published research, which confirmed how the No camp had lost the social media battle.
It analysed 2.8 million tweets in the run-up to the vote and found Yes supporters' use of various social media platforms played a key role in changing the face of Scottish politics.
Angus Robertson, the Nationalists’ deputy leader, noted at the time how if the referendum had happened a decade earlier it would have been impossible for the Yes camp to have reached the levels of support it attained in September 2014.
The fresh claim about how the social media giant helped the No camp raise its game came as a former senior executive warned that it was “not Facebook's job" to become close to any election campaign as it was revealed the US company is now providing direct support to political parties across the globe.
A so-called "global government and politics" team at the social media giant helps political parties to capitalise on the site's features. This includes helping their efforts to take advantage of mass advertising, carry out live webcasts and tackle online abuse.
Last year, the unit embedded employees in Donald Trump's presidential campaign; Hillary Clinton's team declined a similar offer.
However, Facebook stresses how its work to help political parties is entirely neutral. It is not known if it embedded staff directly into the SNP team.
Facebook's political team is run by Katie Harbath, a former Republican digital strategist, who told Bloomberg: "We're proud to work with the thousands of elected officials around the world, who use Facebook as a way to communicate with constituents, interact with voters, and hear about issues important in their community. We take our responsibility to prevent abuse of our platform extremely seriously."
But Elizabeth Linder, a senior figure in the team until 2016, noted: "It's not Facebook's job to be so close to any election campaign."
Earlier this week, a poll showed Labour voters were significantly more likely to share material on social media than Tory ones.
During this year’s General Election Conservative HQ spent more than £1 million on US-style “attack ads,” using Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Much of the material was focused on Jeremy Corbyn and his past record of support for contentious causes.
Yet following the result of the June snap election, it became clear Labour had comprehensively won the digital campaign, which help boost turnout to record numbers among younger voters and proved an important determining factor in many seats.
The YouGov snapshot showed that while some two-thirds of Labour voters said they often shared social media content, this contrasted to just 49 per cent of Tory ones, who said they did so.
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