Facebook tightens ad rules to prevent election interference
In the wake of waves of criticism, Facebook continues to institute more changes to its platform — including new stringent rules for those placing issue-based ads — in an effort to thwart future election interference.
Advertisers who want to run political or issue-ads on Facebook now must have their identity and location verified, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post Friday.
“Any advertiser who doesn’t pass will be prohibited from running political or issue ads,” wrote Zuckerberg, who is scheduled to appear before Congress next week. “We will also label them and advertisers will have to show who paid for them.”
Political and issue ads proved especially powerful in the 2016 presidential election, and there are fears of a repeat of such influence over this fall’s midterm elections.
Last fall, Facebook told lawmakers it would tighten its ad policies after disclosing that more than 3,000 ads were bought by 470 fake accounts and pages run by the Internet Research Agency, a shadowy organization in St. Petersburg, Russia. Those ads targeted Facebook users on hot-button subjects including gun rights, gay rights, religion and presidential candidates Trump and Hillary Clinton.
Facebook subsequently revealed that the reach of those ads exceeded what it had originally stated, impacting 146 million Americans.
“Facebook’s announcement that they will include issue ads in their forthcoming transparency tool, and has endorsed the enactment of the Honest Ads Act, is a welcome step and will add to public awareness about who is paying for advertising content on the platform,” Rep. Adam Schiff, DCalif., said in a statement. Schiff is the highest ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, one of three congressional committees investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The Kremlin-linked IRA, he said, “took advantage of contentious political issues to divide Americans through social media advertising - this move by Facebook will help blunt those attempts in the future.”
Facebook will work with third parties to develop a list of key issues to track, Rob Goldman, vice president of ads, and Alex Himel, vice president of local ad pages, said in a separate post on the Facebook blog.
Ads will be clearly labeled with “paid for by” information later this spring, the company says. And a searchable political ads archive will be available by June. Facebook plans to hire more people and have these measures operational “in time for the critical months before the 2018 elections.”
In recent days, Zuckerberg and Facebook have publicly attempted to face the fallout and scrutiny from a burgeoning crisis. On Wednesday, the company said up to 87 million people, mostly in the U.S., may have had their data improperly shared by political targeting firm Cambridge Analytica.