Facebook ‘ad’justs its rules for political ads
Jonah Losh, Staff Writer
Photo courtesy of Pexels.
Facebook. Ubiquitous with social media, news—and now invasion of privacy and election intervention.
The social media leviathan was busted in mid-March for a data breach by third-party services. This has opened the eyes of the public and the government as to how much access the company from Silicon Valley has to what goes on in our private daily lives.
The blame has come to rest on social media and tech tycoon Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder, chairman and the CEO of Facebook.
Zuckerberg was “grilled” in Congress on April 10, reports Fox News, for nearly five hours in front of a furious bipartisan group consisting of the Senate’s Judiciary, Commerce, Science and Transportation committees.
“Facebook is in over its head,” stated Wyatt Duncan, a digital media major at NGU.
The CEO apologized, saying that he is in charge of Facebook, and therefore liable for its mistakes. “I started Facebook. I run it. I’m responsible for what happens here,” Zuckerberg stated.
“It will take a lot more than an apology and attempt at fixing the mess to get themselves out of the hole they’ve dug,” Duncan said.
“We’ve seen the apology tour before,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal fronted Zuckerberg on the first day of hearings.
Amid practical concerns for users’ data, many fear that Facebook was used to swing election outcomes, specifically in Donald Trump’s 2016 Republican presidential victory. Facebook has announced in response that new measures are to be implemented to prevent “election interference” through fake accounts and advertisements.
“From now on, every advertiser who wants to run political or issue ads will need to be verified,” Zuckerberg posted April 6 on Facebook, listing “big steps” that the social media giant is taking to battle fake accounts. “For even greater political ads transparency, we have also built a tool that lets anyone see all of the ads a page is running. We’re testing this in Canada now and we’ll launch it globally this summer.”
Facebook will also require people who manage popular pages to be verified, signified by a blue badge which means that it is an authentic page for a public figure, company or brand. To get verified, an advertiser or company must authenticate its identity and location. Further, advertisers will have to show who paid for their ads, according to the Zuckerberg post.
“This will make it much harder for people to run pages using fake accounts, or to grow virally and spread misinformation or divisive content that way,” Zuckerberg continued.
“Those who manage large Pages that do not clear the process will no longer be able to post. This will make it much harder for people to administer a Page using a fake account, which is strictly against our policies,” wrote Facebook advertising VP Rob Goldman and Facebook pages VP Alex Himel in a blog post.
Zuckerberg’s biggest concern, at least in writing, is election meddling, going on to write that on of his “top priorities” for 2018 is to prevent interference in upcoming elections in “US, Mexico, Brazil, India, Pakistan and more countries in the next year.” He also did not promise that this will stop people from trying to “game the system,” but that Facebook will at least make it much harder.
Users will be alerted that they are seeing a “Political Ad” as well as who is funding it when one shows up in their news feed, according to ABC News. Zuckerberg defined these political/issue advertisements as “ads about political topics being debated across the country. We’ll work with third parties to develop a list of key issues and will refine that list over time.”
ABC News writer Trish Turner stated that a “separate Facebook post said examples may include ‘pro-life/pro-choice,’ Second Amendment ads or ads that express ‘support for public infrastructure, like new roads.'”
Facebook has answered the bipartisan cries for change with a promise for just that. Will new privacy practices, heightened verification requirements and new rules for political ads and pages be enough for the public to bury the hatchet?
