Facebook to regulate political ads on its platform by disclosing who paid for the campaign

Facebook, the social media giant has recently made an announcement that it will be bringing some changes in the way it runs the ads on its platform. The major change that Facebook is rolling out includes the previously-announced 'paid for by' labels on the advertisement that are related to politics directly, or inherently political, including gun-rights, abortion, immigration, foreign policy among others.

The latest changes will help in bringing disclosures regarding the campaign budget for the users who had seen the ad including their gender and age. The details are said to not only allow the users to make up their own minds about the political alignment of the ad-buyer but also will help the users to get an idea regarding the demography information of the users who are watching the ads. Facebook further says that it will be making its data accessible to the users at facebook.com/politicalcontentads for complete 7 years from the day the ad has gone live. The new policies are live on both Facebook and Instagram.

It is being reported that a number of political experts are calling in social media sites to apply a complete ban of the political ads. This is said to prevent the repeat of 2016 US presidential election which we all know was impacted by the fake ads and news campaigns that were run on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and Tumbler among others. These ad campaigns and bot-driven propaganda is also believed to have affected the Brexit vote in the UK.

Commenting on the matter Facebook said that:

"Banning political ads on Facebook would tilt the scales in favor of incumbent politicians and candidates with deep pockets. Digital advertising is typically more affordable than TV or print ads, giving less well-funded candidates a relatively economical way to reach their future constituents ... And issue ads also help raise awareness of important challenges, mobilizing people across communities to fight for a common cause".

Also, Facebook is not the only social media platform that is claiming to enact these changes to make it easy for the users to identify who is paying for which political ad. Twitter is also expected to introduce a 'learn more' button which will help the users to identify and mark the election candidates in the US. The new feature is said to be a part of Facebook's new 'Ads Transparency Center' initiative, which might arrive by the end of this year.