Facebook plans further restrictions on political ads
In the wake of the controversy over Russian propaganda, Facebook is tightening its rules for political advertising. In the future, anyone wishing to run such ads will have to verify their identity and location. Facebook had already introduced this procedure for explicit election advertising back in October.
Now it will be extended to advertising with a political background altogether, as the online network announced on Friday. These can be, for example, messages distributed as advertisements on controversial topics such as immigration or tensions between political and social groups.
In the future, such advertising will also be made transparent as to who has paid for it. The innovations will initially be introduced in the U.S. and will be rolled out to the rest of the world in the coming months. In addition, operators of Facebook pages with many fans will also have to verify their identity with the company. Facebook will hire "thousands" more employees for the process, it said.
Reaction to US election campaign
The Internet Research Agency group, which operates from Russia, had stirred up political tensions in the U.S. on a large scale during the 2016 presidential election campaign with entries from fake profiles and agitated for the ultimately victorious Donald Trump.
The new steps alone "won't stop everyone who tries to trick the system," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote. "But they will make it much harder for anyone to do what the Russians did in the 2016 election campaign, and use fake profiles and pages for ads." Zuckerberg was referring to upcoming major polls in the U.S., Mexico, Brazil, India and Pakistan, among other countries. (SDA)
