Social media service Facebook has set up a platform to ensure transparency of political advertising while coming to the general election. The Facebook Political Ads Transparency Tool was launched on Thursday to inform users of who is behind political ads.
The political ads appearing on Facebook will include information about whether or not who publishes it. Clicking on it will learn more about ads. Advertisers’ advertisements can include their name, the page on which they are operated, or the name of an organization behind their advertisements.
If any other name is added to the ad, Facebook will ask for more information, such as the phone number, email, website, media certificate, and the Monitoring Committee Certificate from the Election Commission.
This is the right to ensure the authenticity of the organization named in the advertisement – Shivnath Thukral, Director of Facebook public policy
In December last year, Facebook announced it would launch a system in India. Advertisers already have the freedom to use this facility at this time. These features will be compulsory on February 21st.
Facebook’s Vice President of product management Rob Lether (Rob Leathern) explained on Twitter that the innovations were not directed against journalists, human rights defenders, and researchers and were not called upon to fight advertising transparency. He says that the company is only trying not to let third parties abuse user data, and advertising scrappers in certain circumstances can threaten the privacy of users. In the wake of last year’s scandal around Cambridge Analytica, Lethern’s words sound true.
ProPublica has been researching the political advertising market on Facebook for more than two years and examining discrimination cases related to advertising. The organization owns a giant Facebook Political Ad Collector database containing information on more than 120,000 political ad campaigns. And thanks for filling the database. You need about 22,000 users who voluntarily installed and used a special ProPublica plugin.
