According to a research published recently, Facebook misidentified tens of thousands of advertising labeled under its political ads policy, raising concerns that the mistake might lead to political manipulation.

Researchers from KU Leuven University in Belgium and New York University looked at 33.8 million Facebook advertisements that appeared between July 2020 and February 2021.

In a summary of their results, the researchers said, “This is the first known study to measure the performance of Facebook’s political ad policy enforcement mechanism on a wide and representative scale.”

Paid advertising that target “social problems, elections, or politics,” including those that endorse specific candidates, are subject to tougher limitations on Facebook.

Political advertisements appear on the site with a disclaimer explaining who paid for them. Ads that are discovered to be political but were not reported as such are removed.

However, the researchers discovered that in 189,000 situations when Facebook assessed an ad to see whether it should be classified as political, it was incorrect 83% of the time.