Facebook is Making Ads More Transparent Ahead of General Elections in India

• Facebook is working towards making ads connected to political parties and legislation more transparent in India.
• The social media company decided on the move ahead of India’s general elections scheduled for next year.
• The changes have also been rolled out in the US, Brazil, and the UK.

Facebook was accused of not keeping political campaigns in check by Russian agencies that led misinformation campaigns ahead of the previous US presidential elections. Since then the company has been trying to implement changes to keep the platform free from any kind of manipulative advertising and content.

With the general elections taking place next year in India, Facebook is taking measures to make advertisements more transparent on the platform. Ads that reference political parties, political leaders, elections or the Indian legislation will require complete verification before they can be posted. Users who are not authorized will not be able to run political ads on the platform until the verification process is complete. Facebook hopes to make India’s elections free from foreign interference with these changes.

If you want to run a political ad in India, you will be required to confirm your identity and also offer more details on upon whose request you want to place the ad. Once your identity and location are confirmed, you will be allowed to post political ads. The process can take up to a few weeks, so Facebook has requested those interested to sign up as early as possible if they want their ads up in time. To access the new settings related to political on mobile, users simply need to update to the latest version of the app.

Starting next year, all political ads will contain a disclaimer that offers more information on who is publishing the ad, and it will also be linked to their online ad library to see all ads a political advertiser has posted. Users can also take a look at all political ads on the platform using a special search engine built into the Facebook. The data includes user impressions, ad budget, demographics and more.

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