Amid Political Manipulation Controversy... Facebook to Verify Identities of Political Advertisers

Source: NYT

[Asia Economy Reporter Yujin Cho] Facebook, which is resuming political advertising, announced on the 3rd (local time) that it will introduce a procedure to verify the identity of political ad sponsors, according to reports by The New York Times (NYT) and others.

On the same day, Facebook notified advertisers via email of its policy to run ads related to social issues, elections, or politics. Facebook also stated its intention to significantly strengthen the conditions for running political ads.

NYT obtained a copy of the email Facebook sent to each advertising company, reporting that starting from the 4th, Facebook will run ads related to social issues, elections, or politics, while advertisers will undergo a series of identity verification processes before receiving permission to run ads.

However, it did not specify whether this policy would be expanded to countries outside the United States.

Facebook suffered serious damage to its corporate credibility and business environment after it was revealed that during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Russia conducted a public opinion manipulation campaign using Facebook subscriber information to help former President Donald Trump win.

At that time, personal information of 87 million Facebook users was leaked and transferred to Cambridge Analytica in the UK, which used this information for political operations such as the 2016 U.S. presidential election public opinion campaign and the Brexit referendum campaign.

Facebook is preparing new measures to strengthen the conditions for running political ads in addition to verifying advertiser identities.

In a blog post on the same day, Facebook said, "After previously not accepting political ads ahead of the U.S. presidential election vote in November last year and receiving much feedback, we have learned more about political and election ads. Over the next few months, we plan to observe how these new advertising services operate and identify any additional changes needed."

In January, Facebook allowed political ads about candidates only in the Georgia state federal Senate runoff election but maintained the suspension of political ads in the other 49 states.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.