Fri. Mar 29th, 2024
Facebook

Facebook on Thursday announced changes to the way political ads appear on its platform, ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. As per the new rules, users will be able to see political ads with “Published by” or “Paid for by” disclaimers as specified by the advertisers.

Facebook is also working on an Ad library that will keep track of ads posted on the social media platform, including a range of impressions and spend and a demographic of who saw the ad.

The Ad Library archives ads for up to seven years and is accessible to everyone, regardless of whether they are logged into Facebook or not at facebook.com/ads/archive.

India is likely to have its own Ad Library in March, which will help to view insights about the ad more easily.

Facebook, in a post, said it will enforce these features by February 21. The post was written by Shivnath Thukral, public policy director, India, and Sarah Schiff, product manager.

The political ads that are already running on the platform will find themselves in the Ads 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.

Facebook will also provide more information to the users about the pages running these ads. The social media platform will allow users to view the primary country location of the people who manage Pages running or paying for political ads in India.

In order to access this information along with all the ads the Page is currently running, users can visit the Page’s “Info and Ads” section.

Facebook also notes that it will make it difficult for users to administer a page e in India using a fake or compromised account.

In the coming weeks, users who maintain pages with a large number of followings will have to secure their account with two-factor authentication and confirm their primary country location to be able to continue to post to their Pages.

“Protecting the integrity of elections is a top priority for Facebook. By bringing more transparency to political ads and Pages on Facebook, we hope to increase accountability for advertisers and help people assess the content they’re seeing,” Shivnath Thukral said, as reported by TOI.

“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 for time – not just for Facebook but for advertisers as
well,” he added.

India is the fourth country where Facebook is rolling out these features after the US, UK, and Brazil.

The social media giant has been facing flak all over the world for misuse of its platform by various political activists, especially in the U.S where Facebook was reported to be involved in interference by Russian agencies in 2016 presidential elections.

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