Facebook Announces Transparency Rules To Change The Way Political Ads Appear
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Facebook Announces Transparency Rules To Change The Way Political Ads Appear

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Facebook has announced rules to change the way political ads appear, ahead of the upcoming Lok Sabha election. Hence, now, posts will only appear with “Published by” or “Paid for by” that advisers have specified.

An Ad Library being developed by Facebook will allow users to learn more about politics-related ads. This would include a whole range of impressions and spend and demographics of those who saw the ad.


The Ad Library

To understand the origins of the pages better, people will soon be able to view the country locations of people running that pages that feature ads related to politics, reported The Times Of India. The “Info and Ads” of the page will give out this information.

The political ads will be achieved by the Ad Library for up to seven years. It will be available at facebook.com/ads/archive to everyone even if they are not logged into Facebook. It is likely that in March India will have its own Ad Library Report, making it easy to view insights about the ads that will be available in the library.

In a post, Facebook said that by February 21, these features will begin to be enforced. Shivnath Thukral, public policy director, India and Sarah Schiff, product manager wrote the posts.

Political ads, which are already running without the disclaimers, will soon be placed in this Library. “Our systems won’t catch every political ad that runs — so reports from others will be key. If people come across an ad and think it should include a disclaimer, they can tap the three dots at the top right-hand corner of the ad, and select “Report ad.” If we find the ad relates to politics, we’ll remove it and add it to the Library, where it will be accessible for seven years,” the post said.


“This will drive greater authenticity and responsibility”

Due to stringent steps that will be taken, one will find it hard to use a fake or compromised account in order to administer a page in India.

In the following weeks, accounts of people who manage pages with a large audience will have to be secured with two-factor authentication. Their primary country location will have to be confirmed in order to be able to post on their pages.

According to Shivnath Thukral, Facebook’s top priority is to protect the integrity of the elections. This step, he said, will increase advertisers’ accountability and people will also find it easy to assess the content they are viewing.

“In addition to product and policy changes, we’re investing heavily in more people and better technology to proactively identify abuse. We believe this will drive greater authenticity and responsibility over time – not just for Facebook but for advertisers as well,” he added.

After UK, US and Brazil, India happens to be the fourth country where these rules will be implemented.

Facebook has been under a lot of pressure previously because of political actors misusing the platform from various parts of the world. In 2016 presidential elections, there were allegations of Russian agencies interfering.


Also Read: Govt Needs Your View To Block Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter Under Certain Conditions

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Editor : Sumanti Sen

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