Facebook introduces new ad policies amid Russia probe

Facebook announced changes to its ad platform Monday that the tech giant says will help prevent misuse.

The moves come as a part of the company’s response to allegations that groups tied to the Russian government used Facebook ads to influence the 2016 election.

{mosads}Facebook says that it will now have its human and machine reviewers more closely scrutinize the circumstances around an ad purchase, as well as the ad’s intended audience. Additionally, advertisers will have to confirm the organization that they represent before they can buy ads on Facebook.

The company also says that it is extending its policy on forbidden ads to include more overt expressions of violence. Its current policy bars shocking content, direct threats and the promotion, sale or use of weapons.

To help enforce its new policies, Facebook will add 1,000 employees to its global ads review teams over the next year and continue to bolster its machine-learning programs to preemptively detect ads that violate its policies.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had previously announced some of the changes during a livestream in September, where he first mentioned that Facebook would force advertisers to include funding disclosures in their Facebook ads, just as broadcast or print ads require disclosures.

The company reiterated Zuckerberg’s statement that it can’t always catch harmful ads before they’re posted, but that Facebook is hopeful that the expanded policies will mean that it will catch more ads through user reports.

“Now, I wish I could tell you we’re going to be able to stop all interference, but that wouldn’t be realistic,” Zuckerberg said at the time. “There will always be bad people in the world, and we can’t prevent all governments from all interference. But we can make it harder. We can make it a lot harder. And that’s what we’re going to do.”