Facebook looks to boost transparency with new UK political ad rules

Facebook will now require every political ad to come from someone living in the UK and carry a disclaimer to reveal who paid for the banner, the social network announced on Thursday.

Facebook will also store political adverts in a public ad library for seven years after they run as well as who they were targeted at.

In a move to crack down on political “dark adverts” on the social network to avoid malicious parties from trying to influence voters opinion through advertisements on the platform, Facebook established a set of transparency rules last month in the UK that have come into force this week.

Facebook’s Rob Leathern said “in light of these developments, and in an effort to continually learn and improve, we’ll utilise this new process to ensure that ads from news outlets no longer get archived as the index rolls out more broadly.

“We want to do all that we can to support journalism, and we know the inclusion of news ads has been problematic for a number of news organisations. We’ll also continue working with publishers, platforms and fact-checkers to increase safeguards and transparency in this area, which should lead to greater accountability for both Facebook and our advertisers.”

The programme was first launched in the US this summer and later on introduced in Brazil. The UK is the next country where these transparency measures have come into force.

Alongside the new enforcement, Facebook has also announced it will end a similar programme that requires news providers to register when promoting their own stories on the social network.