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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."
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.
Well for the most part it is about preventing regulations from being applied as a gut response to a problem.
If a company is able to show a good will attempt at fixing the problem themselves then chances are they wont have an agency telling them how to do something.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
America needs to flush the toilet on this turd of a company
While I am all for anonymity for people on the internet. I am against it for corporations and states, for the same reason I am against treating corporations as people.
What possible legitimate use could someone have for anonymously posting a targeted advertisement?
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
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?
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
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*
Something like this? Or do you mean more generally?
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".
I'm not on facebook.
Most people who use FaceBook assume that they are the owners of the experience and their data regardless of the reality. The use of FaceBook is taken as an unalienable right. Zuckerburg and team better wake up because this sentiment that their users hold is going to exert serious political pressure on them given an incident or if something happens to jar this sentiment. My hope is that some backlash does happen and FaceBook is forced to provide an API to users that will let other innovators and competitors easily move people off of the centralized, dangerous, exploitative scam that FaceBook is and is becoming. It would be nice to see FaceBook and other companies struggling to give users control over their data instead of the opaque data orgy that is currently unfolding.
I picture users being able to enable or disable access to their data and getting compensated by companies (with crypto-currency) who bid for certain levels of access or classifications--all in a decentralized way. FaceBook is awesome, not because it is special tech, it is not, but because of all of the users that have joined and use the platform. It is too big and important to be centralized and "owned" by a single entity.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
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..
No not at all. If you are going to communicate a position, especially if such a position is expecting use to vote a particular way, which it is to changed how we are govern, then we need more information about such position. You can't anonymously run for president, why should you anonymously advertise who you are pushing to be president. Voting needs to be anonymous, to prevent a backlash from the community, for a choice based on the information you have. Vs trying to give such information, if lies or an attempt to polarize a group, is a way to force the community to backlash against their opponents. I have freedom of speech, which has rules that prevents the government from criminalizing me for my words, however it doesn't mean what I say will not have consequences.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
In general if an industry can self regulate themselves, and work for the general public interest without having the government regulate them, it is a good thing all around. That doesn't mean that we should label them good guys, and stop all vigilance towards them. But the bureaucrats who make up these regulations, have a tenancy to go overboard in some areas and lax in others, Allowing the bigger organizations to take advantages of the loopholes, while the smaller ones are crushed in red tape.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.