By Sarah Frier
Bloomberg News
WWR Article Summary (tl;dr) Facebook Inc. said it will start disclosing more about political ads, bringing the social network’s disclosures closer to what’s required of traditional mediums like television.
SAN FRANCISCO
Facebook is making the move just days before general counsel Colin Stretch is set to appear in front of congressional committees looking into Russian ad spending on the U.S. presidential election last year.
The company said federal political advertisers will have to verify their identities and locations. Their ads will be appended with a “paid for by” disclosure, a requirement that will start in the U.S. and expand to other jurisdictions, the company said in a blog post. It also plans to build an archive of federal election ads so people can look historically at campaigns, Facebook said.
“We remain deeply committed to helping protect the integrity of the electoral process on Facebook,” the company said.
Facebook said it’s expanding transparency measures to all advertising. Marketing spots will have to be linked to a Facebook page running them.
A user will be able to click a “view ads” button to see all the active ads that page is sending to various audiences on Facebook. That test will start in Canada next month and expand to the U.S. by next summer, ahead of the U.S. midterm elections in November.
It’s one of many moves technology companies have made in advance of their presentations to Congress on Nov. 1. Earlier this week, Twitter unveiled similar disclosure plans for political ads and said on Thursday it would ban Russia Today and Sputnik from advertising on its site.
