Bruce Falck, the general manager of revenue product at Twitter, unveiled the new company policy for political ads in a blog post on Thursday. In line with its earlier pledge to tighten the screws on advertisers, Twitter is going to bar foreign nationals from targeting the US public with ads. In order to make sure that no third party outside the US attempts to influence the American political processes, Twitter will subject prospective advertisers, both individuals and entities, to a thorough vetting. The new guidelines require candidates, political action committees and all those registered with the US Federal Election Commission (FEC) to submit their FEC IDs to Twitter. Those who don’t have any must verify their location by sending a notarized form to the company. To ensure that the applicants are actually within the US, Twitter will then return letters to their registration addresses.<\/p>\n
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Moreover, the \u201cprofile photo, header photo, and website\u201d<\/em> of accounts used for advertising \u201cmust be consistent with its online presence and the Twitter bio must include a website that provides valid contact information.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Only \u201ccertified\u201d<\/em> advertisers will be eligible to run ads on Twitter, Falck said. While the changes to the Twitter advertising policy will take effect in the summer, advertisers can already file for certification, he said.<\/p>\n Once the policy is fully enforced, anyone will be able to clearly discern political ads in user-generated content thanks to a mandatory disclaimer featuring the name of an individual or an organization paying for the ad. Moreover, if an ad is authorized by a candidate in a political race, it will also be shown in a tweet.<\/p>\n Back in October, Twitter announced<\/a>\u00a0it was setting up the \u2018Transparency Center\u2019 that would allow anyone to track the origins and see all background info on any ad currently running on Twitter. The center will be inaugurated later this summer, Falck announced.<\/p>\n The same set of measures has been introduced<\/a> by Facebook as well. Rob Leathern, the director of Product Management at Facebook, wrote that identification and labelling policies similar to those touted by Twitter are taking effect on Facebook on Thursday.\u00a0 Facebook will, from now on, store all political ads for seven years. The archive can be \u201creached by anyone in the world\u201d<\/em> through a link<\/a>.<\/p>\n These ads with political content will be also housed in an archive for seven years. And that same archive can be reached by anyone in the world at https:\/\/t.co\/bGcDLKs481<\/a> – We think these new features set a new standard for transparency in digital advertising<\/p>\n \u2014 Rob Leathern 🛠 (@robleathern) May 24, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWhen you click on the label, you\u2019ll be taken to an archive with more information. For example, the campaign budget associated with an individual ad and how many people saw it \u2013 including their age, location and gender,\u201d<\/em> Leathern wrote.<\/p>\n Read more<\/p>\n Notably, the new policy will apply to both political ads, designed to drum up support for a particular candidate or party, and to the so-called \u2018issue-based\u2019 ads. The latter pertains to any of the 20 \u201cnational issues of public importance,\u201d<\/em> the list <\/a>of which was released\u00a0by Facebook earlier in May. The topics listed range from abortion, crime, economy and the environment to foreign policy and terrorism. The move is seen to be prompted by the US intelligence community\u2019s allegations that while Moscow did not seek to sway the 2016 elections in favor of either of the candidates, it wanted \u201csow discord\u201d<\/em> within American society by stirring up debate on \u201cdivisive issues.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n As Twitter and Facebook\u2019s clampdown on so-called \u2018Russian bots\u2019 widens, the crusade has claimed some innocent victims. It was reported that Bulgarians, who, as well as Russians, write in Cyrillic, are increasingly falling victim to the purge for simply tweeting in their native language. The Verge reported<\/a> earlier this week that many Bulgarian users have complained about having their accounts suspended, noting that the most likely explanation was Twitter\u2019s \u2018bot\u2019 criteria, which states that even if there are no other signs that an account is linked to the Russian government, simply having a name written in Cyrillic is incriminating enough.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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