Facebook Inc on 21 September launched an overhaul of how it handles paid political advertisements, giving a concession to US lawmakers who have threatened to regulate the world's largest social network over secret ads that run during election campaigns.
The company also said it would turn over to congressional investigators the 3,000 political ads that it says were likely purchased by Russian entities during and after the 2016 US presidential election.
Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said the company, for the first time, would now make it possible for anyone to see any political ads that run on Facebook, no matter whom they target.
Zuckerberg, broadcasting live on Facebook from company headquarters in Menlo Park, California, said the changes would help address concerns that governments, including Russia, are using Facebook ads to meddle in other countries’ elections.
Highlights From Zuckerberg's Statement:
The integrity of our elections is fundamental to democracy around the world. That’s why we’ve built teams dedicated to working on election integrity and preventing governments from interfering in the elections of other nations. And as we’ve shared before, our teams have found and shut down thousands of fake accounts that could be attempting to influence elections in many countries, including recently in the French elections.
Zuckerberg added that while it was not possible to completely prevent interference, the social media network would make it much harder. He shared a list of nine steps the company would be taking to “protect election integrity and make sure that Facebook is a force for good in democracy.”
We are actively working with the US government on its ongoing investigations into Russian interference. We have been investigating this for many months, and for a while we had found no evidence of fake accounts linked to Russia running ads. When we recently uncovered this activity, we provided that information to the special counsel. We also briefed Congress – and this morning I directed our team to provide the ads we’ve found to Congress as well.
These list of nine steps included making political advertising more transparent.
“When someone buys political ads on TV or other media, they’re required by law to disclose who paid for them. But, you still don’t know if you’re seeing the same messages as everyone else. So, we’re going to bring Facebook to an even higher standard of transparency. Not only will you have to disclose which page paid for an ad, but we will also make it so you can visit an advertiser’s page and see the ads they’re currently running to any audience on Facebook. We will roll this out over the coming months, and we will work with others to create a new standard for transparency in online political ads,” Zuckerberg said.
He added, “We are increasing our investment in security and specifically election integrity. In the next year, we will more than double the team working on election integrity. In total, we’ll add more than 250 people across all our teams focused on security and safety for our community.”
You can read his entire statement below:
(With inputs from Reuters.)
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