by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Networking, Online Marketing, Social Media, Technology, World
San Francisco : In a fresh bid to prevent foreign interference into elections, Facebook has begun labelling all political and issue ads in the US — including a “Paid for by” disclosure from the advertiser at the top of the advertisement.
Advertisers wanting to run ads with political content in the US will also need to verify their identity and location, the social media giant said in a blog post late Thursday.
“When you click on the label, you’ll be taken to an archive with more information. For example, the campaign budget associated with an individual ad and how many people saw it – including their age, location and gender,” said Rob Leathern, Director of Product Management at Facebook.
The changes have currently been introduced in the US.
If people see an ad which they believe has political content and is not labelled, they can report back to Facebook.
To do so, just tap the three dots at the top right-hand corner of the ad, select “report”, and then “it refers to a political candidate or issue”.
“Facebook will review the ad, and if it falls under our Political Advertising policy, we’ll take it down and add it to the archive,” Leathern wrote.
The advertiser will then be banned from running ads with political content until they complete Facebook’s authorisation process.
“We won’t always get it right. We know we’ll miss some ads and in other cases we’ll identify some we shouldn’t. We’ll keep working on the process and improve as we go,” the company said.
The changes are aimed at preventing a situation like the 2016 US presidential election when Russian advertisers created fake posts and bought ads to interfere in the election process on both Facebook and its photo-sharing platform Instagram.
Facebook said it is working closely with its newly-formed Election Commission and other stakeholders to launch an API for the archive.
“We’re working closely with news partners and are committed to updating the archive to help differentiate between news and non-news content,” the post added.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Marketing Basics, Markets, Networking, Online Marketing, Social Media, Technology, World
San Francisco : Learning from the Facebook fiasco, Google has rolled out new policies for verifying election advertisers in the US that require additional verification for anyone who wants to purchase an election ad on Google in the country.
“As a first step, we’ll now require that advertisers confirm they are a US citizen or lawful permanent resident, as required by law,” Kent Walker, Senior Vice President at Google, said in a statement late Friday.
This means advertisers will have to provide a government-issued ID and other key information.
“To help people better understand who is paying for an election ad, we also require that ads incorporate a clear disclosure of who is paying for it,” Walker added.
The move comes in the wake of strong evidence that Russia used social media and online ads in an attempt to influence the 2016 US Presidential election.
Google will soon release a new “Transparency Report” specifically focused on election ads.
This report will describe who is buying election-related ads on its platforms and how much money is being spent.
“We’re also building a searchable library for election ads, where anyone can find election ads purchased on Google and who paid for them,” Walker noted.
Google is already investing in keeping its own platforms secure and working with campaigns, elections officials, journalists, and others to help ensure the security of the online platforms that they depend on.
“We’ve developed a range of ‘Protect Your Election’ tools with Alphabet’s ‘Jigsaw’ that are specifically tailored for people who are at particularly high risk of online attacks,” said the Google executive.
“We’ve partnered with the National Cyber Security Alliance and Digital Democracy Project at the Belfer Centre at Harvard Kennedy School to fund security training programmes for elected officials, campaigns, and staff members,” Walker said.
In order to prevent election interference on its platform, Facebook has also introduced new changes to increase transparency and accountability for electoral ads and pages.
To get authorised by Facebook, advertisers will now need to confirm their identity and location.
“Advertisers will be prohibited from running political ads–electoral or issue-based–until they are authorised,” Rob Goldman, Vice President, Ads at Facebook, said recently in a blog post.
Facebook is also investing in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and adding more people to help find advertisers that should have gone through the authorisation process but did not.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Networking, Online Marketing, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : In a bid to increase transparency on its platform, Twitter has announced to publicly disclose all ads — including political and issue-based ads — and the identity of who bought them.
In the wake of Russia’s alleged use of social media platforms to interfere with the 2016 US presidential election, two Democratic senators introduced last week the “Honest Ads Act”, a bill which requires tech companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter to disclose political ads purchased on their platforms.
“In the coming weeks, we will launch an industry-leading transparency centre that will offer everyone visibility into who is advertising on Twitter, details behind those ads, and tools to share your feedback with us,” Twitter posted late on Tuesday.
The transparency centre will show all ads that are currently running on Twitter, including “Promoted-Only” ads, how long ads have been running and ads targeted to you as well as personalised information on which ads you are eligible to receive based on targeting.
People can also report inappropriate ads or give negative feedback for every ad running on Twitter, whether the ad targets them or not.
“To make it clear when you are seeing or engaging with an electioneering ad, we will now require that electioneering advertisers identify their campaigns as such. We will also change the look and feel of these ads and include a visual political ad indicator,” Twitter said.
Twitter has already turned over to the US Senate 201 profile names of accounts associated with alleged Russian effort to meddle in the presidential election last year.
The move came after critics said that the tech giant was not taking the congressional probe seriously enough.
Twitter was also criticised for reportedly deleting tweets and other user data useful to investigators looking into Moscow’s suspected manipulation of the social media service during the 2016 election.
The Senate has invited Twitter, along with Facebook and Google, to a public hearing set for November 1.
“We will make new updates first in the US and then roll them out globally. We look forward to engaging with Members of Congress and other key stakeholders on these issues as the legislative process continues,” Twitter posted.
—IANS
