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| Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the network will hire "thousands" of new employees to verify the identity of political advertisers (AFP Photo/JUSTIN SULLIVAN) |
Washington
(AFP) - Facebook announced Friday that it will require any political ads on its
platform to state who is paying for the message, and would verify the identity
of the payer, in a bid to curb outside election interference.
The social
network, which is under fire for enabling manipulation of its platform in the
2016 election, said the new policy would require any messages for candidates or
public issues to include the label "political ad" with the name of
the person or entity paying for it.
Facebook
chief Mark Zuckerberg said the change will mean "we will hire thousands of
more people" and will take place this year ahead of US mid-term elections
in November.
"These
steps by themselves won't stop all people trying to game the system,"
Zuckerberg said on his Facebook page. "But they will make it a lot harder
for anyone to do what the Russians did during the 2016 election and use fake
accounts and pages to run ads."
A separate
Facebook statement said the changes would help improve transparency and
accountability of the network.
"We
believe that when you visit a page or see an ad on Facebook, it should be clear
who it's coming from," the statement said.
"We
also think it's important for people to be able to see the other ads a page is
running, even if they're not directed at you."
To get
authorized by Facebook, "advertisers will need to confirm their identity
and location," the statement said.
"Advertisers
will be prohibited from running political ads -- electoral or issue-based --
until they are authorized."
Facebook
made the announcement as Zuckerberg prepares to appear before Congress next
week to answer questions about the harvesting of personal data on 87 million
users by a British political consultancy working for Donald Trump's
presidential campaign.
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