Following calls from the British government over election advertising transparency, anybody trying to place a political ad on Facebook in the UK will from today have to reveal who's paying for it.
Expanding on a policy introduced in the US earlier this year, the company will require advertisers on both Instagram and Facebook itself to verify their identity and location. They'll need to provide a copy of a UK driving licence or UK or EU passport, and a valid UK postal address.
"From today, all advertisers wanting to run ads in the UK that reference political figures, political parties, elections, legislation before Parliament and past referenda that are the subject of national debate, will need to verify their identity and location and carry a 'Paid for by' disclaimer," explain Richard Allan, vice president of global public policy and Rob Leathern, director of product management in a blog post.
"We see this as an important part of ensuring electoral integrity and helping people understand who they are engaging with. We recognise that this is going to be a significant change for people who use our service to publish this type of ad."
However, the company is stopping short of introducing the same leasures as in the US, where these rules apply to any political hot potatoes, such as immigration, for example.
The company is also opening an archive of all political ads on the site, making them publicly available for seven years. It will detail the number of people who saw the ad with their age, location and gender, as well as the cost of the ad.
"The library is completely searchable and, as of today, can now be accessed by anyone in the world regardless of whether they have a Facebook account or not at facebook.com/ads/archive," Allan and Leathern say.
The changes are designed to satisy government concerns following the scandal over Cambridge Analytica, which was revealed to be harvesting the data of 50 million Facebook users without permission from the company or users. The data was allegedly used to target voters in the 2016 Brexit referendum, as well as the US presidential election.
Shockingly, there are still no moves to fully and independently investigate Russian electoral interference in the UK, unlike in the US. The government seems keener to demand new policies from tech companies than to find out exactly what happened and how.
This summer, the UK's election watchdog, the Electoral Commission, called for online political advertising to be made more transparent, saying voters 'need to know who is targeting them and how'.
And soon after, a government committee warned of 'a democratic crisis founded on the manipulation of personal data, and targeting pernicious views to users, particularly during elections and referenda'.
"Users were unaware that they were being targeted by political adverts from Russia, because they were made to look like they came from their own country, and there was no information available at all about the true identity of the advertiser," commented committee chair Damian Collins.
Right now, Facebook's changes don't have any immediate relevance. However, that could change if, as seems entirely plausible, the UK is plunged into a snap general election or even a referendum on the final Brexit deal. Expect to see a renewed interest in the Cambridge Analytics scandal and calls for a Mueller-style inquiry - and even more pressure on Facebook over transparency.
