Facebook and Twitter have brand-new guidelines for political advertisements. Here’s how they work

How do you resolve an issue like Russian propagandists? How do you keep them from meddling in elections?

Well, at Facebook and Twitter, the response is more openness about political advertisements.

Starting Thursday, both business stated, they’re following through on pledges from late in 2015 to include confirmation, disclosures and extra info to all political advertisements.

The method it’ll work is that when you encounter a political advertisement on Twitter, you’ll see “Promoted (political)” on the bottom and whether the advertisement was licensed by a prospect.

On Facebook, there’ll be a “Paid for by” disclosure at its top. Additionally, if you click the label, you’ll be required to a page where you can find out just how much cash was invested and the number of individuals saw the advertisement, in addition to a breakdown of their age, gender and place.

While Twitter will consist of a “learn more” button so individuals can determine and call the advertisement purchaser, Facebook is going an action even more by making its information openly available at facebook.com/politicalcontentads for 7 years from the day an advertisement runs.

“This is a tool that makes it easier for you to find problems and it’s something that we want to invite you to report as well so we get better faster,” stated Rob Leathern, director of item management at Facebook, in a teleconference with reportersThursday

Twitter’s variation of this, called the Ads Transparency Center, will not show up for a couple of months yet, the business stated.

To lots of, the brand-new policy could not have actually come rapidly enough. Facebook in specific has actually been under increasing analysis following scandals over Russian propagandists and an information leakage that exposed as much as 87 million users’ profile info to a UK-based political consultancy called CambridgeAnalytica Together, they have actually pressed Facebook, and its 34- years of age wunderkind co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, to precede legislators, financiers, marketers, designers and even us users to excuse stopping working to appropriately handle among the world’s biggest sites.

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Now Facebook is playing catchup. It’s set new privacy policies and data protection rules and instituted audits to prevent app developers from improperly leaking user information again. And now it’s making good on its promise to begin tackling the specter of more disinformation campaigns during the upcoming midterm elections in the US.

But, as Facebook is quick to point out, these moves are just the latest in a series of efforts to strengthen its service against  further abuse. It’s not a guarantee this all won’t happen again.

“As long as there are people sitting in Russia whose job it is to interfere with elections around the world, this is going to be an ongoing conflict,” Zuckerberg said when speaking to Congress last month. “This is an ongoing arms race.”

Doing something, at least

It didn’t take much for the Russian propagandists to make a splash on Facebook. Last year, the company said it found $100,000 worth of ads purchased from Russian-linked accounts. That bought 3,000 ads seen by 10 million Facebook users. When Zuckerberg disclosed the ads, he vowed to work for more “election integrity.”

Facebook has since partnered with researchers to establish an “independent election research commission” that Zuckerberg said “will solicit research on the effects of social media on elections and democracy.” The group is also helping to analyze political advertising on Facebook and to make it more easily accessible to others for their own research.

Facebook isn’t alone in tackling the issue of political ads. There’s Twitter, too, and Google likewise is instituting new rules around political ads. Facebook and Twitter have also expressed support for the Honest Ads Act, a bill moving through Congress that would require political ads on the internet to have similar transparency as those on radio and television by, for example, identifying who paid for them.

To help make sure no one tries to run political ads outside Facebook’s rules, the company is turning to its artificial intelligence technology. These AI programs are trained to help identify which ads might be trying to circumvent Facebook’s rules. 

Users themselves can also flag questionable ads, which will then be reviewed by the company. Facebook says that by adding a second reviewing step for reported ads, and offering copies of them in the ads archive, that will protect against people reporting an ad in bad faith.

“Part of how we’re going to be held accountable and how we’re going to involve folks is by providing the archive, which will show you all the different ads we have,” Leathern said. “We believe we have very good coverage in place.”

Twitter struck a similar tone in its announcement that it plans to continue improving the way it handles political ads over time. 

“We believe transparency is key for both the people using our service and advertisers to feel confident in our platform,” the company said in a blog post Thursday. “This is just the beginning of our efforts in increased transparency for all advertising on Twitter.”

First published May 24 at 11:00 a.m. PT.
Update at 11:24 a.m. PT: Adds details about Twitter’s political ads transparency program.

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