Facebook, ahead of its 2019 election, announced that all political advertisers will need to authenticate their identity and location ahead of running a campaign in the lead up to the 2019 General Elections. The social networking giant which counts India as the largest market by users, is taking on a strictly offline process that will verify the identity and locations of political advertisers.
Facebook has announced an offline verification process asking individual advertisers and agencies via an email that they must produce scanned copies of address and identify proofs, which will be verified with visits by its India-based team.
A Facebook spokesperson stated that they are dedicated to maintaining elections integrity and have been adding to their capabilities to make defenses over the last few months and have done a lot to prevent interference and protect the integrity of elections.
The new move marks the first time that Facebook has adopted a ground-level approach to verify the identity of advertisers and prevent bad players from running political campaigns that violate Facebook’s policies. For Facebook, this is the first time it would adopt a “feet on the street” approach, owing to the unique challenges India represents as a political advertising market.”
The social networking giant takes the move at a time when political parties are plotting their digital strategies for the general elections with the goal of preventing malicious people from exploiting the platform ahead of the 2019 elections.
