Facebook reveals plans to change political ad rules
A top Facebook executive says the company will change its political advertising policy to distinguish between journalism content and political advocacy in the “coming days”.
Facebook’s head of global news partnerships, Campbell Brown, said in a blog post that the social media giant will divide its political ads archive into two sections — one for ads promoting news stories about politics and one for ads promoting political candidates and issues.
The new strategy follows criticism from publishers who argued that Facebook’s decision to categorise promotion of their news articles as political content would further confuse readers about what is fact and what is opinion. The announcement is the latest step by the company to combat manipulation of its platform in the wake of revelations that Russian operatives spread misinformation on the site to influence the 2016 US presidential election.
Under Facebook’s new political transparency rules launched last month, any ads with political content will be placed in an archive that includes the identities of who’s paying for the ads and the demographics of who has seen the ads. Advertisers must go through a verification process establishing their US location and identity. Campbell’s blog post included photos depicting the archive’s two labels — “Promoted News” and “Ads With Political Content”.
For now, Facebook plans to put verified media advertisers, who are members of the Local Media Consortium, the Local Media Association, the Local Independent Online News and the National Association of Broadcasters, into the separate news section in the archive. Ads bought by members of other trade groups including “all major national publications” will also be placed in the separate archive, said Facebook spokesman Adam Isserlis.
“Our ultimate goal is for the Promoted News section of the archive to reflect the broader set of news outlets running ads on Facebook that contain political content,” he said.
“We’re working closely with news partners to develop a more inclusive process for determining which pages belong in the Promoted News section.”
The News Media Alliance, which has been one of the fiercest critics of the ad archive, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Facebook first alerted publishers to its plan to lump advertisements bought by media organisations with those bought by political candidates into the same archive last month.
Within hours of a report on the initiative and the criticism from news organisations, Facebook said it would work with publishers to come up with a policy that distinguishes journalism from political advocacy.
The issue of political ads on social media also caught the attention of Congress. US senators Mark Warner and Amy Klobuchar introduced the Honest Ads Act, which would subject online political ads to similar disclosure rules that govern advertising content in mainstream.