Every time you go to YouTube, every website that takes Google Ads, all over Facebook, mostly wherever you are online, you are repeatedly assaulted by Labour Party adverts. There are a few PN adverts on top of that.

When the campaign started, we could have said that was overkill. We could think they might haveunderestimated what they would get for their money and ended up flooding the place with silly Malta Flimkien ads. They’ve had plenty of time to adjust and now there can be no doubt that this constant assault is intentional.

Advertising is usually meant to convince you to buy something. Done badly it could put you off buying it. Labour’s online campaign does neither and appears intended to do neither. It is intended to make your online world completely taken over by Labour. Your spaces of interest and distraction, your Facebook feed, or the suggestions brought up by your YouTube interests are being embalmed in Labour’s flag. It is the online equivalent of red flags plastering a city run by communists, or black flags in a dystopian city run by fascists.

They’re everywhere and you cannot look away.

If you feel assaulted, cornered into surrendering even your private engagement with your phone or your laptop to Labour’s omnipresence, they have managed to violate the last vestiges of your private existence, like the TV screens that cannot be turned off in 1984 and Fahrenheit 451.

And like the TV screens that cannot be turned off in 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 it is not just that you are forced to watch what Big Brother transmits with no ability to stop it or change the channel, the screen also monitors your reaction. Do you stop it when the video allows you to? Do you click on it to read more when you’re invited to? How many times do you see it and how long for? Every time you take a decision like that a note is made. Big Brother knows.

What can be done about this?

At the opening of the electoral campaign, I pointed out that the PN was obeying the Google rules and tagging its own adverts as political advertising. Political advertising is carried by Google on criteria that ensure that just this sort of conduct of the Labour Party is not allowed. That’s apart from the fact that it ensures transparency.

This Malta Today report from yesterday seems to be under the impression that the PN is outspending Labour on Google ads. It refers to data published by Google that says the PN spent just over €52,000 while the PL spent €26,000.

Malta Today also says “no historical data prior to February 2022 is available for the Labour Party”. That’s because Labour never complied with Google rules and now it is doing so in the breach just so it looks like it’s spending something. It’s lying. It’s spending much, much more. Anyone spending an hour online in Malta knows that it is simply impossible that the PN is spending more than the PL on online advertising.

There’s a way you can tell. I’ll explain that in another post and tell you what you can (and frankly should) do about it.