BORIS JOHNSON: The stakes for this country
have seldom been higher, and the choice has never been starker.
WILL MOY: We're monitoring the election pretty
comprehensively.
We're monitoring TV, we're monitoring online,
we're monitoring the news debates, manifestos.
The where we stopped and were really surprised
was when the conservative party chose
to masquerade as an independent fact checker
during the first TV debate.
That was a clear choice to make, and I
think is a choice-- a step to cross a line.
JEMIMA KELLY: It also just shows us
the level of aggression in the Tories' current strategy.
They then tweeted things as if they
were facts throughout the debate against Jeremy Corbyn,
and at the end, pronounced Boris Johnson the winner.
Either they were trying to fool people,
or they were trying to get a reaction,
making what they'd done go even more viral,
because that's one of the strategies.
WILL MOY: I think we're seeing quite aggressive campaigning
from all the political parties.
Fairly consistent misrepresentation by political
parties of other political parties' positions.
JEMIMA KELLY: The internet allows
you to doctor videos and other content
to make it seem like something has been said
or something has been done that actually isn't true.
PIERS MORGAN: Why would the EU give you a good deal
if they know that you're going to actively
campaign against it?
WILL MOY: To see a political party manipulate
a video of its opponent giving an interview
to make it look like, in this case,
Keir Starmer had no answer to a question,
which he actually managed to answer in that interview,
was a very surprising thing.
JEMIMA KELLY: And clearly, they had
used a shot of him waiting to answer a question,
and then put it after the question was asked.
It was a deliberate ploy to make it look like Labour's Brexit
minister didn't know what he was talking about.
WILL MOY: That is a sort of classic disinformation tactic.
It's not the sort of thing you expect
in a responsible democratic election.
We haven't seen the Labour party manipulating videos.
We haven't seen the Labour party impersonating journalists
in their election communications.
JEREMY CORBYN: 451 pages of unredacted documents
and information.
WILL MOY: What we have seen is aggressive examples
of them trying to misrepresent the position of other parties,
certainly in the view of other parties.
Labour is claiming that the Tories are going to do a trade
deal with the US that will cost the NHS 500 million pounds
a week.
That's an extraordinarily large amount of money.
That's equivalent to about a fifth
of what we spend on health.
The US would have to do a trade deal with us, where
UK drugs costs go up 2.5 times to match what is currently
paid in the US, and the British government
would have to be willing to absorb
extra costs of about 27 billion pounds to the public purse.
That's a pretty extraordinary claim,
based on a very extreme scenario.
We think it's unrealistic.
Labour are, nonetheless, repeating it heavily
to their voters.
WOMAN: You need to vote for the Liberal Democrats.
WILL MOY: Both the liberal Democrat party
and for conservative party have been creating
campaign leaflets that are dressed up to look
as if their local newspapers.
We think that's misleading.
We think it's trespassing on independent journalism, which
is vital in an election campaign.
And we think it's inappropriate for political parties
to do that.
WOMAN: We deserve better than what--
WILL MOY: There was a tactic from the Lib Dems
we've seen repeatedly in local constituencies, which is
bar charts of who can win here.
This sort of claim that we're second
or we're on the verge of winning possibly the most far fetched
we've seen so far was using the results of a recent police
and crime commissioner election as
if it was some guide to how people will
vote in the general election.
To put that in context, 15% of people in that area
had voted for the police and crime commissioner,
and a general election turnout we would
expect to be nearer 70% or 80%.
So it's no guide whatsoever.
JEMIMA KELLY: The spotlight is on the Tories.
I think they have taken a more aggressive strategy.
If you look at some of their Facebook ads, a lot of them
are targeting Jeremy Corbyn, fear based messaging in order
to make people worried about what a Jeremy Corbyn led
government would be like.
WILL MOY: If the most common tactic we've seen from Labour
in this election is to look at what might happen in trade
negotiations with the US, take the worst case scenario,
and then tell that story as vividly as they can.
The most common tactic we saw from the conservatives,
particularly early in this election,
was to imagine what Labour might do,
despite the fact that they haven't published
their manifesto, make something up,
and then say it's going to cost you a fortune.
They came up with essentially a completely false number,
and then they got wall to wall coverage of it for a day.
And journalists who are trying to honestly report
on the campaign are in danger of being used
to spread false information.
JEMIMA KELLY: The Tories launched a website called
labourmanifesto.co.uk And so if you were to search Labour just
before the launch of the manifesto,
the top result would be this fake Tory website called
labourmanifesto.co.uk.
WILL MOY: They were buying online adverts
to get to the top.
There's a lot of spend going into that.
And there's not a lot of scrutiny about spending.
JEMIMA KELLY: Google have said that they're no longer going
to allow political adverts that are targeted based on someone's
supposed political leanings, but they are obviously
still allowing this kind of thing that can
manipulate potential voters.
WILL MOY: Elections are fought and won
based on thin margins in many places,
and it will be a relatively small number of constituencies
and a relatively small number of votes that determine
the outcome of this election.
If some of those votes are retained by deception,
then we have a problem.
JEMIMA KELLY: Yes, digital strategy
will have an impact on the election outcome.
MARK ZUCKERBERG: Even if we wanted to ban political ads,
it's not even clear where you draw the line.
JEMIMA KELLY: Facebook makes huge majority of its revenues
from advertising.
So if it was to stop all political advertising,
as a lot of people are saying it should do,
that would massively dent its revenues.
The impetus is not going to come from big tech,
it's probably not going to come from government.
The impetus is probably going to have
to come from some sort of external pressure,
whether that be campaign groups or just the general public.
WILL MOY: And we have had almost two decades of warnings
from the electoral commission and others
that our election laws are out of date.
That principals that are long established in our election
law, like campaigning materials should be transparent
and should say who they come from,
although they apply offline, do not
apply online, simply because we haven't updated election laws.
We need to do that.
We need to do it urgently.