It also said that Twitter failed to acknowledge that “virtually all news media organizations spend money on advertising their news coverage”. In September, Facebook identified a Russian-backed influence operation that spent $100,000 on ads promoting divisive and political messages over a two-year period. For political ads mentioning a specific candidate, users will be able to discover the identity of the organisation funding the campaign, the total campaign ad spend, the targeting demographics chosen and historical data. On Friday, Facebook announced similar measures, saying it would ask political advertisers to verify their identities and locations. Karpf described the transparency tools as a “good first step” but added that more steps were needed to regulate digital political advertising.

Source: The Guardian October 27, 2017 22:07 UTC