Both Facebook and Twitter are promoting the introduction of new features to help users know who is behind the political ads they're seeing on their platforms – a direct response to how Russia manipulated social media to interfere in the 2016 election.
On Facebook alone, ads purchased by the Kremlin-aligned Internet Research Agency reached roughly 10 million U.S. users around the presidential race. Content from the IRA’s profiles and pages may have been seen by more than 140 million users on both Facebook and Instagram. And these Russian trolls similarly took their messages – stoking cultural, racial or political tensions – to Google-owned YouTube and Twitter during the 2016 election.
Facebook appears to be moving more quickly and thoroughly to make changes than the other companies.
CNN:
In an attempt to prevent foreigners from buying political ads targeted at Americans, Facebook will require advertisers to provide a picture of their government-issued ID, the last four digits of their Social Security number, and a US mailing address.
Starting Thursday on Facebook, political ads will include a marker at the top indicating who has paid for it. Clicking on the label will bring users to a new repository of all political ads that have run on the site, along with information about the people who saw it, like their age and location. The new rules cover ads about political candidates as well as hot-button policy issues, like gun control, immigration and terrorism, and apply to both Facebook as well as its photo-sharing app, Instagram.
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Twitter, meanwhile, said Thursday that it soon would require political advertisers to prove their identity before promoting tweets on the platform. In a blog post, the company said it also plans to label political ads “in the near future,” a promise it first made in October. Twitter said it is developing a separate policy for “issue ads,” the kind of content that Russian agents used on topics such as immigration and gun control.
Along with Facebook and Twitter, Google previously has promised more transparency around political ads that appear in search results or on sites like YouTube. Earlier this month, the search giant said it would begin verifying the identities of advertisers at the end of May, with a fuller database and report on political ads still to come.
By implementing these changes on their own, Facebook, Google and Twitter are trying to stave off tough new regulation from Washington, where lawmakers long have argued that the tech industry hasn’t done enough to police the content that appears online.
Who’s behind those political ads on Facebook? Now, you can find out. (WaPo)
After Russia scandal, Facebook begins labeling political ads (CNN)