14:49 21.02.2019

Facebook to tighten policy of placing election ads in Ukraine in mid-March

2 min read
Facebook to tighten policy of placing election ads in Ukraine in mid-March

The world's largest social network Facebook will tighten from the middle of March the policy of placing by users of advertisements regarding the upcoming March 31 presidential election in Ukraine, Facebook Product Manager Sarah Schiff has said.

"As of last week we already started to temporarily disallow foreign electoral ads that target Ukraine, and we launched this six weeks prior to the presidential elections on March 31 as part of our effort to prevent foreign interference. And beyond what we launched last week, we also are going to be launching our ads transparency tools in mid-March and this is the similar ads tools to what we have launched in the United States, Brazil, India, and the UK," she said during a conference call with journalists on Wednesday.

According to her, the new rules suggest more stringent identification of the persons placing such advertising.

"Before anyone can run any ad related to politics in the week leading up to Ukraine's election, we will actually require that person running the ad submits valid identity documents issued by Ukraine in order to confirm that they are who they said they are. Once they confirm their identity, they should also be able to share more information about who is responsible for those ads. And this is really part of our commitment to ensure authenticity behind all political ads on Facebook," she said.

At the same time, she added that the new policy implies wider opportunities for the examination of placed advertisements.

"In addition to ensuring that people behind political ads have confirmed their identity, we also want to show information to people so that these people have more information to add themselves to know who is really responsible for that. And also from this view, you can see more information about ads performers, like how much was spent on the ad, how many impressions were delivered, whether the ad is still active and demographic information about who the ad actually reached along the lines of age, gender and location. All of this information will be placed in 'ad library,' publicly available at facebook.com/adlibrary," she explained.

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