UK election is full of dirty tricks and political clicks

Britain is proving a lawless landscape for political mudslingers mining cyberspace for votes in an election that could determine the U.K.'s future relationship with the European Union.

Two years after Britain found itself at the epicenter of a global scandal over the misuse of Facebook data by political campaigns and a year after lawmakers called for sweeping reforms to protect democracy in the digital age, the country's political parties are bombarding voters with misleading social media messages after the government failed to act.

Matt Walsh, who researches digital political communication at the University of Cardiff, says: “It's the Wild West out there. The parties can pretty much do what they want in terms of putting political messages out there and they can do what they want in terms of upsetting social media users.’’