With the presidential election coming up in 2020, Facebook is bringing in a new policy that will require US-based publications connected with political parties, PACs, and politicians to disclose their affiliation when they purchase political ads.
The company will still give access to those outlets to register as a news page and advertise, but they will need to pass through some of the company’s screening and disclaimer process when they want to post ads that touch on social issues, elections or politics. In the past, these groups could, in some instances, claim news exemptions from Facebook’s authorization process.
Facebook plans to introduce other restrictions as well. The social media giant says it won’t include its content in Facebook News. They also won’t have access to the Messenger Business Platform and WhatsApp business API.
“We believe it’s important to ensure when it comes to advertising, these Pages are held to the same standard as political entities on Facebook,” the company said.
Facebook says identifying politically connected publishers is a new strategy for the company, but today’s announcement stands on policies the company has been modifying for the past few years. In 2018, Facebook introduced a rule that required election- and issue-related ads to include a ‘paid for by’ disclosure. However, after the policy ended up effecting non-political ads and publishers, the company later pulled out US-based media outlets from it.
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