Instead,
These steps appear unlikely to assuage critics — including politicians, activists, tech competitors and some of the company's own rank-and-file employees — who say that Facebook has too much power and that social media is warping democracy and undermining elections.
And Facebook’s stance stands in contrast to what its rivals are doing. Google has decided to limit targeting of political ads, while Twitter is banning them outright.
“Today’s announcement is more window dressing around their decision to allow paid misinformation," said
Social media companies have been trying to tackle misinformation since it was learned that Russians bankrolled thousands of fake political ads during the 2016 elections to sow discord among Americans.
The fears go beyond foreign interference. In recent months, Facebook, Twitter and Google refused to remove a misleading video ad from President Donald Trump’s campaign that targeted Biden.
TV stations and networks aren't required to fact-check ads either, but social media gives candidates a certain advantage: the ability to “microtarget" their ads.
For instance, they can use information gleaned from voter rolls, such as political affiliation, and try to reach just those people. Or they can narrow the target audience to those who have shown interest in guns, abortion or immigration, based on what the user has read or talked about on Facebook. Candidates might even show one ad to young Democratic women interested in both gun control and climate change, and a different ad to everyone else.
Google, the digital ads leader, decided in November to limit political-ad targeting to just three broad categories — sex, age and location, such as ZIP code.
Under Google's policy, candidates would be free to show immigration ads next to immigration-related stories only; they wouldn't be able to show ads to just
Google said that approach aligns its policies with those of other media such as print, TV and radio.
“Sunlight is the best disinfectant,” he said.
Facebook said in a blog post Thursday that it considered limiting microtargeting for political ads. But it said it learned about the importance of such practices for reaching "key audiences” after talking with political campaigns from both major parties in the
The company said it was guided by the principle that “people should be able to hear from those who wish to lead them, warts and all, and that what they say should be scrutinized and debated in public.”
The company is also tweaking its ad library so people can search for exact phrases and limit results using filters such as dates and regions reached. Facebook's ad library currently lets anyone find out how much was spent on an ad, how many times it was seen, and the age, gender and location of the people who saw it.
“Facebook and Twitter should not be making these decisions themselves,” said
“It shouldn’t be up to
For all of AP's tech coverage, visit https://apnews.com/apf-technology
Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed., source