WASHINGTON ― In what
looked like a presidential address with a distinct Silicon Valley aesthetic,
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressed his private online nation of 2 billion
users on Thursday from his glass-walled office space. He went live to explain
how Facebook will henceforth respond to efforts by nation-states and private
actors to use the social media platform to influence U.S. elections.
Zuckerberg detailed a
nine-point plan. The most important of these new policies involves a
requirement that “pages” disclose which ads they have purchased to run
elsewhere on Facebook. Under federal law, online electoral ads are not
currently required to provide the same level of disclosure or disclaimers as
television and print ads do.
“When someone buys
political ads on TV or other media, they’re required by law to disclose who
paid for them,” Zuckerberg said. “But you still don’t know if you’re seeing the
same messages as everyone else. So we’re going to bring Facebook to an even
higher standard of transparency. Not only will you have to disclose which page
paid for an ad, but we will also make it so you can visit an advertiser’s page
and see the ads they’re currently running to any audience on Facebook.”
The disclosure policy
will be rolled out over the coming months, Zuckerberg said. Facebook will also
“work with others to create a new standard for transparency in online political
ads.”
The new policies follow
the company’s revelation last week that the Russian Internet Research
Association ran popular Facebook pages and purchased on-site ads during the
2016 election in an effort to drive participation in actual rallies and
protests that targeted immigrants and Muslims and supported President Donald
Trump’s campaign.
Facebook has already
turned over copies of those pages and ads to Robert Mueller, the special
counsel investigating Russia’s alleged influence campaign in last year’s
election and the possibility that Trump’s campaign was somehow involved. The
company also announced on Thursday that it would hand over that advertising
material to congressional investigators.
Zuckerberg’s address to
his nation, carried on Facebook Live, showed a corporate CEO announcing
decisions that will govern an important aspect of public elections, including
campaign finance, spending and election integrity issues. The new policies have
been crafted by a private company with no public input and no democratic
mechanism for discussion. Facebook has essentially taken on part of the role of
the Federal Election Commission through self-regulation ― which worries some
people.
“Facebook took an
important step forward, but that a single company has this kind of power shows
clearly that we urgently need legal reforms to mandate disclosure online,” said
John Wonderlich, executive director of the pro-transparency Sunlight
Foundation.
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