Facebook and Twitter Plan New Ways to Regulate Political Ads

SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook and Twitter have officially announced on Thursday to increase the transparency of political campaign ads, these changes aims to prevent the foreign manipulation of the coming midterm elections.

Facebook has clearly announced. They will begin including a “paid for” label on the top of every political ads in the United States. When someone clicks on that label he/she will be taken to a page, Where they will be able to view the cost of the ad and the demographic breakdown of the audience that viewed the ad.

Facebook has also clearly stated that they will keep an archive of the all political ads for the maximum seven years, or through might be a full congressional election cycle.

These ads are available to the members of Facebook at facebook.com/politicalcontentads.

Twitter announced that they will restrict those who could run any of the political ads on their network, it will require those political ads to verify for federal elections to identify themselves and certify that they are in the United States.

The Foreign nationals will not be able to target audience in the United States, Twitter Said.

Twitter said it would start giving prominent visual cues, which includes a badge and a disclaimer, to campaign ads.

Those accounts which use political campaigns must have a profile photo, and any of the advertisers on Twitter biography must include a website link that provides the valid contact information.

The candidates and the political committees should provide their identification number from the Federal Election Commission.

Those who are not registered ought to submit a notarize form. Enforcement of the policy will begin this summer.

“We are committed to enforcing stricter policies for political advertisers and providing clear, transparent disclosure for all ads on Twitter, with more details for political campaigning ads,” said a statement from Vijaya Gadde, who runs Twitter’s legal and public policy team, and Bruce Falck, its general manager of revenue product.

Twitters aims are similar as of Facebook to verify political ads on their platforms. Both the companies have faced huge trouble in Washington for allowing Russians to use them to try to manipulate the 2016 presidential election.

Some lawmakers have called for laws require disclosure like those that of Facebook and Twitter are promising.

In April, Facebook started requiring proofs from the advertisers who were posting an ad related to American political campaign in the United States — by giving the last four digits of their Social Security Numbers, a picture of a government issued identification and a United States Mailing address.

Facebook clearly stated that they would mail a person a code that authorized him/her to buy the official Facebook political ads once the company had fully verified the other information of that individual.

Facebook is also working really hard to obsolete the false information on the site as well. In addition to working with independent fact checking teams, like Politefact.

Facebook said this week that they will start very soon a news literacy campaign that will help teach the American public how to spot disinformation.

This will include the information which is posted at the very top of the Facebook News Feed, As well as the print advertisement campaign that the company has said, it would reach to 170 million people in the country.

Facebook further added that they will begin to start working with the academics to measure the volume and effects of disinformation on the social media site.

Twitter, In addition to the new ad disclosure rules, said they would start by labeling the tweets from the people running for office — but only with the candidate’s permission.

Twitter has started requested approval from the candidates and expects to start using the feature at the end of the month.

“When people are looking for news and information, they turn on Twitter to find out what’s happening in the world right now,” Bridget Coyne, a senior public policy manager, wrote in a post outlining the new labeling policy. “This is especially true during elections.”

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