Aiming to prevent abuse and better defend against foreign interference in India’s elections, Facebook has announced to increased transparency of ads in the country especially those ads that reference political figures, political parties, elections, and legislation.
“Now anyone who wants to run an ad in India related to politics will need to first confirm their identity and location, and give more details about who placed the ad. The identity and location confirmation will take a few weeks so advertisers can start that process today by using their mobile phones or computer to submit proof of identity and location. This will help avoid delays when they run political ads next year,” said By Sarah Clark Schiff, Product Manager at Facebook.
Advertisers can download the latest Facebook app and visit Settings to get started.
Next year, Facebook will start to show a disclaimer on all political ads to provide more information about who’s placing the ad, and an online searchable Ad Library for anyone to access. This will be a library of all ads related to politics from a particular advertiser as well as information like the budget associated with an individual ad, a range of impressions, as well as the demographics of who saw the ad.“We will not require eligible news publishers to get authorised, and we won’t include their ads in the Ad Library,” added Schiff.