Ireland's abortion vote becomes a test for Facebook, Google

Facebook and Google took aggressive steps this month to prevent foreign meddling ahead of Ireland's vote

Craig Dwyer recently sat in an office above a convenience store in downtown Dublin, scrolling through a database he had compiled of hundreds of online ads that have popped up about Ireland’s abortion referendum on Friday.
 
Dwyer, who co-founded an election transparency group, pulled up one anti-abortion YouTube video that had only a few views when it was posted last year. After the video was republished as a referendum campaign ad on Facebook by a group from an unknown location, it attracted more than 1.2 million views, he said. He also showed an anti-abortion ad on Facebook that purported