Paragraph in question.
Are the driver's licences they used not the ones of the Senators? Or maybe they photoshopped them, or something along those lines?
I'm a bit unhappy at the lack of elaboration on the methodology they used to test this out.
> We used 10 fake Facebook pages with no content, and changed the “paid for” disclosure after each senator was approved.
Makes it sound to me like they got approval using a real identity and then changed the now-approved account to use a different name.
Methodology aside, though, Facebook shouldn't be showing that they verified the identity if they did not verify the identity. Unless the methodology was "we stole the identities of some senators" or "we cracked their passwords", this is a failure a another breach of trust on Facebook's part.
However, Vice got around this by getting an ad approved and then editing (changing entirely?) the name and other properties of the ad. Maybe Facebook should re-approve ads when certain properties change? It's definitely impersonation... I'm not sure what officially constitutes stealing an identity.
I'd be curious how this experiment of impersonating a senator and buying advertising would go across print/billboards/reddit/other platforms. Maybe Vice will try some more experiments.