‘Paid for’ labels on Facebook political ads
Facebook has begun adding interactive “Paid for by” labels on all U.S. political advertising as the company continues its efforts to blunt intense pressure to do more about rampant election interference by foreign powers.
The labels started appearing on Facebook and its Instagram photo app Thursday, a day after Twitter said it would add labels to tweets and retweets involving U.S. political candidates, beginning next week with races for governor and Congress.
Facebook’s labels will appear on ads about candidates and a list of 20 hot topics, with drop-down menus and links leading to information such as who paid for it, a range of money spent and how widely it was seen. There are also bar charts showing the ages, gender and location of people it reached.
“Helping people to understand who’s trying to influence their vote will help us better defend against foreign interference and other abuse,” Katie Harbath, the Menlo Park company’s global politics and government outreach director, and public policy director Steve Satterfield wrote in a blog post.
Facebook announced in April that it would start requiring greater transparency for ads promoting political candidates and advocating positions on community issues. CEO Mark Zuckerberg, shortly before he faced a gantlet of questions during two days of testimony before Congress on the Cambridge Analytica scandal, said the company was already requiring advertisers to verify their identities and locations before placing a political ad.
The company is hiring 3,000 to 4,000 employees by the end of the year to review ads, part of a team of 20,000 safety and security workers Facebook previously said it is adding.
The moves are meant to address severe criticism of Facebook for allowing posts paid for by Russian agents leading up to the 2016 presidential election. Zuckerberg initially downplayed those problems for months, but was forced to shift his stance as more information about the extent of foreign interference and news about misuse of personal data of Facebook users became public.
This month, Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee released more than 3,500 Facebook ads created or promoted by a Russian internet agency to stoke racial and political divisions.
The “Paid for by” labels represent a complete about-face for Facebook, which had lobbied to avoid requirements that political ads be labeled. Under previous rules that are only now being updated, a “small items” exemption meant to apply to promotional items like pens and buttons let the social network avoid disclosure, under the argument that the ad spaces on its website and app were too small to accommodate labels.
“These changes will not prevent abuse entirely,” product management director Rob Leathern said in a post. “We’re up against smart, creative and well-funded adversaries who change their tactics as and when we spot abuse. But we believe that they will help prevent future interference in elections on Facebook.”
Clicking on the labels leads to an archive of more information that can also be reached by anyone directly through a Facebook political content ads site, which will include ads the advertiser has run in the U.S. as far back as seven years.
Facebook has also created an initial list of 20 broad but potentially controversial ad topics that will also require a label. Those topics are abortion, budget, civil rights, crime, economy, education, energy, environment, foreign policy, government reform, guns, health, immigration, infrastructure, military, poverty, social security, taxes, terrorism and values.
“We know this needs to be a living and breathing document,” Harbath said in a conference call with journalists.
The company rejected calls to ban all political ads because the “benefits outweighed the potential harm,” Harbath and Satterfield wrote.
“We won’t always get it right,” they wrote. “We know we’ll miss some ads and in other cases we’ll identify some we shouldn’t. We’ll keep working on the process and improve as we go.”