Facebook and Twitter Spy Into Who’s Behind Their Ads

MENLO PARK, Calif, Social media companies, are stepping up to stop the disinformation on their online platforms ahead of this year’s elections, the news was out on Thursday that the new tools will be aiming to improve the transparency around advertisements.

In the announcement, Facebook and Twitter said that they are working hard to broaden around public, searchable archives of ads which run on their online platforms.

Twitter has began the process of requiring anyone who is running any sort of campaign ad will go through proper verification process, said Thursday that they were introducing new Ads Transparency Center, which basically allows anyone to view the database of any type of ad which is run on their platform.

Facebook, which had created a database of political ads public last month, which was announced on Thursday that it is aimed to make thing easier to see in the background details — such as the buyer of all the ads running across the Facebook and their various platforms which includes Instagram and Messenger.

Now each of the Facebook page will have a new tab which is called “Info and Ads.” Clicking on that tab it will reveal the entire ad a page runs, and as well as the details of the page itself, including when it was founded and the any name changes.

“Our ultimate goal is very simple: We want to reduce bad ads and make sure people understand what they are saying,” said Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer. “We believe advertisers and us should be held accountable for content and ads.”

Facebook has promised us to label the news separately, after a backlash from the publishers.

Both Twitter and Facebook were criticized for allowing the Russian agents to use the social media services to manipulate the 2016 presidential election. And the lawmakers and independent researchers have questioned these platforms that why the companies are too slow to respond to these issues.

Facebook has said again and again that the political ads archive is under progress, and fought the criticism that too many campaigns ads slip through, which that those no political ads are incorrectly flagged.

The Twitter archive of ads were made public on Thursday, but the company said that finding an ad requires knowing what to look for. This archive basically allows the users to see the advertisements distributed for specific buyers, but that does not mean that it will allow a broader search to reveal for example; any advertisement which is in support of President Trump, or any political issue ads that mention immigration or gun control.

Twitter has clearly stated that they hope to make it possible to search the archive by terms. The current version is just the beginning toward improving the transparency of the ads.

Facebook has promised to include the verification of any person who is running campaign ads on their platform.