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| Google announces new rules for placing online US election ads on the social media platform (AFP Photo/Lionel BONAVENTURE) |
San Francisco (AFP) - Google on Friday said that people looking to place US election ads on its platform will need to show identification, and make clear who is paying.
Policy
changes being rolled out come as online ad 'duopoly' Google and Facebook strive
to avoid being used to spread misleading or divisive ads aimed at voters.
"Our
work on elections goes far beyond improving policies for advertising,"
Google senior vice president Kent Walker said in a blog post.
"We're
investing heavily in keeping our 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. "
Google
promised last year to make political advertising more transparent.
New
policies for US election ads were a 'first step' in fulfilling that vow,
according to Walker.
Google said
that it will require anyone seeking to buy election ads in the US to prove they
are legal residents, as required by law.
"That
means advertisers will have to provide a government-issued ID and other key
information," Walker said.
Ads will
have to clearly disclose who is paying for them, according to Walker.
Google
later this year will release a new report showing who is buying
election-related ads on the platform and how much money is being spent.
The
California-based firm also said it is building a searchable library of election
ads bought at Google and who paid for them.
Facebook
last year announced that only authorized advertisers would be permitted to run
election ads at the leading social network and its photo and video-sharing
service Instagram.
In April,
Facebook extended that rule to "issue ads" such as hot-button
political topics in the US.
"We
are working with third parties to develop a list of key issues, which we will
refine over time," Facebook vice presidents Rob Goldman and Alex Himel
said in a blog post.
"Advertisers
will be prohibited from running political ads — electoral or issue-based —
until they are authorized."
Political
ads will be marked as such, and include information about who paid for them,
according to Facebook.
The social
network also added a requirement that pages with large numbers of followers be
verified, to make it harder for people to use fake accounts to influence
politics.
"We
know we were slow to pick up foreign interference in the 2016 US
elections," Goldman and Himel said in the post.
The updates
at Facebook were "designed to prevent future abuse in elections,"
they explained.
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