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Facebook Ends 'Dark Posts' -- All Ads Will Be Visible To The Public (seattletimes.com)
"Under pressure in advance of hearings on Russian election interference, Facebook is moving to increase transparency for everyone who sees and buys political advertising on its site," reports the Associated Press. Here's the official announcement from Facebook's "VP of ads" :
Starting next month, people will be able to click "View Ads" on a Page and view ads a Page is running on Facebook, Instagram and Messenger -- whether or not the person viewing is in the intended target audience for the ad. All Pages will be part of this effort, and we will require that all ads be associated with a Page as part of the ad creation process... We know how important it is to our community that we get this feature just right -- and so we're first rolling it out in only one country. Testing in one market allows us to learn the various ways an entire population uses the feature at a scale that allows us to learn and iterate... We will start this test in Canada and roll it out to the U.S. by this summer, ahead of the U.S. midterm elections in November, as well as broadly to all other countries around the same time... During this initial test, we will only show active ads. However, when we expand to the U.S. we plan to begin building an archive of federal-election related ads so that we can show both current and historical federal-election related ads.
Facebook "will verify political ad buyers in federal elections, requiring them to reveal correct names and locations," adds the Associated Press, noting that the effort is "likely meant to head off bipartisan legislation in the Senate that would require social media companies to keep public files of election ads and try to ensure they are not purchased by foreigners."
In addition, Facebook insists that "For political advertisers that do not proactively disclose themselves, we are building machine learning tools that will help us find them and require them to verify their identity."
Facebook "will verify political ad buyers in federal elections, requiring them to reveal correct names and locations," adds the Associated Press, noting that the effort is "likely meant to head off bipartisan legislation in the Senate that would require social media companies to keep public files of election ads and try to ensure they are not purchased by foreigners."
In addition, Facebook insists that "For political advertisers that do not proactively disclose themselves, we are building machine learning tools that will help us find them and require them to verify their identity."
Don't get me wrong; they need to open up about the politics, but don't you think it's really awesome the way that they use this as an excuse to demand more identity information about people, even if it is just those "involved" in politics and those "mistakenly thought to be" involved in politics. It's almost like a car thief getting to agree he'll only take cars from tax-dodgers and he'll pay of their taxes whilst keeping the rest as a fee in future. If you are going to be a true criminal, go big. They'll certainly make you CEO and they might even make you President in the long run.
And within a week of rolling out the test case in Canada, someone will find out to game it and purchase fake ads under a fake name that Facebook will verify as real. I'm pretty confident enterprising Russian operatives will have no problem getting around the new system. All they need to do is find some Americans to act as a front, wittingly or unwittingly. All those stolen identities from the Equifax hack could come in handy here.
I'm sure these same people certainly won't operate at the state level....
America needs to flush the toilet on this turd of a company
People have a right to speak anonymously. I hope for swift and robust circumvention of this crap.
Oh well, expect a billion "John Smith"s to sign up...
Seriously. Just like how I long for when Google becomes AltaVista. There needs to be new players otherwise we're doomed.
Nothing like closing the barn doors after the horses leave.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Youtube, Facebook, twitter, and other social media companies are turning down advertising money because of politics.
Conservatives get the bland "purple bed" ads, and conservative groups get ads turned off or demonetized because these corporations are pushing a social idea over an economic one.
How about allowing the NRA, gun accessories, sport fishing, Christian services, ACLJ, right-wing news, etc to sell advertising. These people are who the advertisers really want and will pay extra for. So when I hear that "not advertiser-friendly" we know that's code for "not our kinda of people" and is just more tribalism in the silicon valley mindset.
After a while, these conservative groups will have to start companies to compete against silicon valleys attempt to exclude them. Same goes for customers, after a while. A certain customer base will realize they are being actively targeted or even avoided for political reasons.
So while I think its nice Facebook is trying to have disclosure in advertising, I find it dubious with their history of promoting their social agendas. This is just to appease the public and politicians with the ongoing facebook/Russia advertising investigation.
VP of AIDS?
And all advertisers will be billed for these views and stats will be padded. Increasing ad revenue, while appearing to care.
Pretty sly fuckers.
and so we're first rolling it out in only one country.
And may I suggest that that country be the newly formed independent country-state of Catalonia.
Nothing against being the testbed, now is there? At least it is too soon or too early for the Russians to be their enemy.
An awesome transparency feature would be a button explaining why you were targeted for this ad.
"better ways of doing things eventually just replace the inferior things" - Linus Torvalds 09-08-07
Why bill only one advertiser for a space when you can bill as many as you have?
Sly trick.
what if i buy $100,000,000 worth of advertising for a corporation or product that is owned by someone else who directly supports political advertising?
you can't fix this. zark fuckerberg is an incompetent boob.
you're all idiots.
Presumably the reason there wasn’t a View Ads button before is that they know no one would click it. Now that they’ve generated a reason to do so, I wonder if the view will count as a proper ad view - and doubly so for people who were not targeted.
If it counts for targeted people then this could be viewed as a way to increase ad traffic for FB. If it counts for non-targeted people I doubt advertisers would like that very much. Thus the right answer would seem to be to make these views not count.
But then could Pages link to their own View Ads page to get hits they don’t pay for?
*grabs popcorn*
and clearly displaying the name of the advertiser in the ad itself?
You aren't the target, either for "fake news" or the proposed "solution." The self-centered snowflakes who can't make up their minds what to have for dinner, without checking on social media, are. Sad part is, these people vote and have children. Those who have a spine, two operating brain cells, and realize other people are not just in our heads, know to fact check and avoid known bad actors. Y'know, the kind of people getting kinda hard to find nowadays. Chill out, just sit back and watch the world burn.
"Starting next month, people will be able to click "View Ads"
Why would anybody do that?
I'd click on a button saying:" Never see any ads in your life again" but certainly not on one saying "View ads".
Hilary spent a billion dollars and lost because of a $150,000 ad buy. Interesting.
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I'm COMPLETELY opposed to giving Facebook any leeway here whatsoever. They were a platform for swaying the US election. If that isn't a textbook case for requiring regulation, nothing is. They should be subjected to EXACTLY the same regulations re: political ads as tv and radio. If it's a political ad, the sponsor's name has to be CLEARLY identified. Not "available if some tech-savvy person happens to decide to click a button and check out the code underneath the page, where the sponsors will be listed in coded binary lolz".
I'm not on facebook.
It's interesting to note the actual phrasing as it only mentions federal elections but not state elections..
"Facebook "will verify political ad buyers in federal elections, requiring them to reveal correct names and locations,""
This needs to be done for all elections because state level elections are extremely important as well..