Senators Mark Warner (D-VA) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), authors of the Honest Ads Act, are calling on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to fix the site's new transparency tool that is supposed to help users know who is paying for the political and issue ads they see on the social network.
VICE News has run several recent experiments showing how simple it is to post ads with fake "paid for by" labels, proving the Facebook screening process is broken.
From Senator Warner's press release:
Earlier this week, Vice News published a story about their reporters’ experiences in buying political ads on Facebook. The reporters found that while Facebook’s transparency tool required them to verify their identification and U.S. addresses before they could buy ads, once they were verified, the reporters were able to post divisive ads and lie about who paid for them. ProPublica also issued a report detailing how corporations have been able to hide sponsorship of ads on Facebook. While Facebook committed to implementing transparency measures similar to those that the Honest Ads Act would require, they are currently failing to carry out the basic disclosure and disclaimer provisions of the legislation.
“The fact that Facebook’s new security tools allow users to intentionally misidentify who placed political ads is unacceptable. That Facebook is unable to recognize ads connected to a well-established foreign interference operation is also deeply troubling. Both point to a central vulnerability that enable these kinds of ads: Facebook’s failure to utilize human reviewers of the political ads it sells,” the senators wrote. “Free and fair elections require both transparency and accountability which give the public a right to know the true sources of funding for political advertisements in order to make informed political choices and hold elected officials accountable. However, it is clear that there are significant loopholes with regard to how Facebook sells ads and the process by which disclaimers are applied to political ads.”
“We strongly urge you to take every step necessary to close these loopholes in the transparency tool.”
(...)
The Honest Ads Act, which was also sponsored by the late Senator John McCain (R-AZ), would prevent foreign actors from influencing our elections by ensuring that political ads sold online are covered by the same rules as ads sold on TV, radio, and print.
Warner, Klobuchar Urge Zuckerberg to Address Loopholes in Facebook’s Ads Transparency Tool (press release)