Facebook announced changes to its political advertising policy on Friday ahead of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s expected appearance in Washington next week.
The site will now show who pays for all political and issue-based ads and require advertisers to be more transparent about who and where they are. The changes come on the heels of a bad year for the social media company after revelations that user data was given to outside parties, and used Russian-based internet trolls were allowed to advertise during the 2016 election.
Mr. Zuckerberg announced the changes in a Facebook post.
Facebook says the new labeling on ads will debut in the coming months and a searchable database is set to launch in June. Mr. Zuckerberg said it’s important to the company to have these changes done prior to the midterm races this fall.
Over the past month, as the social media giant has scrambled to contain the damage from the multiple scandals, its share price has lost roughly $80 billion in market value.
Last week, Mr. Zuckerberg unveiled a centralized system for users to better control privacy and security settings — while this week the firm announced moves to remove “more than 270 pages and accounts” it had found to be operated by the Internet Research Agency, or IRA, a shadowy Kremlin-connected propaganda operation.
Earlier this year, the IRA was charged with waging “information warfare” against the U.S. in an indictment by special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, which has been investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
In a statement on Friday, Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee and a Capitol Hill leader for more social media accountability, applauded the move and noted that the majority of Kremlin propaganda that appeared on the platforms during the 2016 election “didn’t mention Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump — but they did mention divisive political issues like guns, LGBT rights, immigration, and racial issues.”
“That’s why today’s announcement by Facebook is so important,” the Virginian added.
A bipartisan clutch of senators, led by Mr. Warner, are urging lawmakers to pass the ’The Honest Ads Act’ which would require significantly more transparency and accountability to online political ads than currently exists and ensure the ads “abide by the same disclosure rules as TV and radio ads.”
Mr. Zuckerberg is scheduled to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on April 11.
• Dan Boylan can be reached at dboylan@washingtontimes.com.
• Sally Persons can be reached at spersons@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.