Social media giant Facebook has come up with more stringent rules on political advertising in Europe aligning with EU regulators directions to check foreign meddling in the upcoming legislative election.
“I don’t want anyone to be in any doubt that this is a top priority for the company,” said Richard Allan, VP, Global Policy Solutions, Facebook.
Facebook claims that all such ads will be tagged as ‘’paid for’’ detailing information on who bought them, for how much and the number of people who have seen it. Advertisers who are located and authorised in a particular country will be allowed to run political advertisements which comply with the state policies. The advertisements will also be archived for a timespan of seven years and can be publically searched.
Facebook and has also said that it will block advertisements that fail to comply from mid-April.
“The convenience we understand why they want that, but we could not find any way to carve that out without opening up opportunities nobody would want to see,” said Allan.
“Over the past year, there has been huge progress in awareness of the problem. Now it is becoming a central part of EU thinking … to address the fragilities that our democratic systems may have,’’ said a senior diplomat from an EU member state
