Facebook unveils new transparency features for political ads

Facebook on Thursday rolled out a new change aimed at increasing the transparency of political ads on its platform.

The change requires both election and socially focused issue-based ads displayed on Facebook and Instagram to show a “paid for by” label explaining who or what group purchased the advertisement.

The label will link to more information about who purchased the ad and the ad itself, including details like the campaign budget associated with an individual ad and how many people viewed it as well as their demographic information, like age, location and gender.

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A Facebook page cataloging the ads will serve as an archive for the information, allowing anyone to view it, regardless of whether or not they are targeted.

Rob Leathern, Facebook’s director of product management, encouraged users to report posts that appeared to be political or issue ads that did not include a “paid for by” disclaimer.

Leathern said in a post that advertisers not complying would be banned until they made it through the company’s verification process.

“We won’t always get it right. 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,” wrote Facebook’s Katie Harbath, Facebook’s global politics and government outreach director, and Steve Satterfield, its director of public policy.

They wrote that despite this, the social media company still feels that allowing political and issue-based ads on the site is important because “digital advertising is typically more affordable than TV or print ads, giving less well-funded candidates a relatively economical way to reach their future constituents.”

The pair said that banning political ads from their platform “would make it harder for people running for local office — who can’t afford larger media buys — to get their message out.”

Harbath and Satterfield wrote that Facebook is partnering with the market research company YouGov to work on future civic issues as they arise on the platform.

The changes come in response to the scrutiny that Facebook and other technology companies faced after their platforms were used by Russian trolls attempting to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

Groups like the Russia-based Internet Research Agency paid for ads on Facebook and promoted events that encouraged social division.

Twitter and Google, which have also dealt with congressional scrutiny over their platforms being manipulated by Russian trolls, have also been rolling out their own political ad transparency efforts.

The companies are working under the threat of increased regulation by lawmakers who have introduced legislation to introduce their own requirements on digital political ad disclosures.