Facebook Inc said on Tuesday that it would put labels on political ads shared by users on their own feeds, shutting down what critics have been saying for years was a glaring loophole in the company’s campaign transparency measures.
The world‘s largest social network has attached a “paid for” disclaimer to political ads since 2018, after suffering a backlash for not preventing Russia from using its platforms to influence the US presidential election of 2016.
But the label disappeared after people shared the ads on their own feeds, which critics say undermined its usefulness and allowed disinformation to continue to spread uncontrollably.
“Previously, the idea was that these were organic publications, so these publications did not necessarily need to contain information about the ads,” said Sarah Schiff, Facebook product manager, who oversees the change.
After receiving comments, Schiff said, the company now considers it important to disclose if a message “was at one point an advertisement.”
Facebook introduced a similar labeling approach for state news media earlier this month, but that label sometimes disappears with sharing and does not appear when users post their own links to these outlets .
Society faces demands to do more to tackle fake viral information before November 3 presidential election, including by presumed Democratic candidate Joe Biden, who last week asked Mark Zuckerberg to reverse his decision exempt political advertisements from fact checking.
Zuckerberg touted the transparency tools in response, arguing that voters should be able to scrutinize the statements of future political leaders without hindrance.
On Tuesday, in an editorial in USA Today, he pledged to post a voting information center at the top of news feeds from American users. He also said the company would aim to help 4 million people register to vote, double its 2016 goal.
(This story has not been edited by GalacticGaming staff and is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
