Facebook set to launch transparency tools aimed at electoral ads in India
As elections are approaching India in a couple of months, Facebook is said to launch a transparency tool aimed at electoral ads next month to help in preventing foreign interference and making policies on its platform simple and transparent.
Advertisers will be required to authorise the purchase of political ads. Facebook will provide people with more information about ads related to politics and related issues.
Samidh Chakrabarti, the Director of Product Management, Civic Engagement at Facebook, said in a blog post on Monday, "We will create a publicly searchable library of these ads for up to seven years. The library will include information on the range of the ads' budget, a number of people they reached and demographics of who saw the ad, including age, gender and location".
Facebook plans on setting up two new regional operations centre that will be focused on election integrity and will be located in Dublin and Singapore offices.
"This will allow our global teams to better work across regions in the run-up to elections".
"These teams will add a layer of defence against fake news, hate speech and voter suppression, and will work cross-functionally with our threat intelligence, data science, engineering, research, community operations, legal and other teams," explained Katie Harbath, Global Politics and Government Outreach Director at Facebook.
Facebook said that it will expand its third-party fact-checking programme that covers content in 16 languages.
"We have rolled out the ability for fact-checkers to review photos and videos in addition to article links, because we know multimedia-based misinformation is making up a greater share of false news," said Facebook.
Facebook will be organising a series of workshops over the next six months in Singapore, Nairobi, Berlin, New York, Mexico City, Delhi and more, wherein it will invite organisations and experts who work on issues like technology, free expression and democracy, procedural fairness along with human rights.
Last month Facebook said, that it would start showing disclaimer on all political ads in India, which will offer more information on who's placing the ad and online searchable Ad Library for anyone to access.
Sarah Clark Schiff, Product Manager at Facebook said, "Now anyone who wants to run an ad in India related to politics will need to first confirm their identity and location, and give more details about who placed the ad".
(With IANS inputs)
