Facebook has been cleaning up the mess at its end for which its CEO Mark Zuckerberg was questioned about how the social networking platform is run.
Part of its cleansing process is Facebook’s attempt to be transparent with respect to spending by individuals or users for ads on its platform. According to a post by Zuckerberg a few weeks ago, Facebook has changed its rules for advertisers who want to run political or issue-related ads on the platform.
These revisions in its ad policy have been brought about in order to make sure that the upcoming elections in countries like India, Pakistan and Mexico are not hit with contentious marketing that tries to propagate the agenda of particular party.
The post clearly states that from now on, anybody looking to advertise via Facebook will have to reveal his/her identity and location from where they are publishing the ad.
Zuckerberg has clearly highlighted the steps, which they believe will help Facebook in preventing political mishaps, which was evident with the Russian involvement during the 2016 US Election campaign. Many users on the platform had reportedly paid to buy election ads around that time.
Any advertiser who doesn’t pass will be prohibited from running political or issue ads. We will also label them and advertisers will have to show you who paid for them. We’re starting this in the US and expanding to the rest of the world in the coming months.Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Facebook
His post also points out that Facebook will be hiring “thousands of more people” to keep a check on the standards of ad that get created on the platform. They have built tools to make sure anybody can check the number of ads one page is running.
The new hirees will be responsible for verifying pages/users who’re creating ads.
Election interference is a problem that’s bigger than any one platform, and that’s why we support the Honest Ads Act. This will help raise the bar for all political advertising online.Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Facebook
Zuckerberg admits these measures alone can’t prevent people from “gaming the system”, but he’s certain that mistakes made during the US Election campaign in 2016 can be averted.
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