Facebook introduced new transparency requirements for ads related to politics and elections in Ukraine that become effective on March 18, less than two weeks before Ukrainians are to vote in presidential elections on March 31.
The new policy will allow Facebook users to see who paid for an ad. It already functions in the United States, United Kingdom, Brazil, and India. A similar policy has also been rolled out in Israel ahead of the election to the national legislature on April 9.
It obliges advertisers to identify their ads as political. They also must confirm their identity and provide a “Paid for by” disclaimer, which has to be approved by Facebook. Authorized Facebook pages in Ukraine will display all locations of the page administrators in the “Info and Ads” section.
In addition, Facebook has created a public database with all Ukraine-related political ads with disclaimers that will be archived for seven years. The library will also contain ads that run without a disclaimer if they are reported and determined to contain political content.
“This is a big step towards transparency but it won’t curb the problem with Russian disinformation,” said Ruslan Deynychenko, a co-founder and executive director of StopFake.org, Kyiv-based fact-checking group that debunks fake news – mostly produced by Russia.
“There are still ways to circumvent the rules, for instance, by registering an organization under false identity and paying for ads through a third party. And one can hire a page admin based in Ukraine,” Deynychenko said.
Facebook is the most popular social networking site in Ukraine with about 13 million users. But besides paid-for political ads, a lot of disinformation is distributed in a form of organic content through news sites and individual accounts, as well as on other social media platforms such as YouTube and Twitter.
Deynychenko also points at the fact that the information about sponsors of political ads will be valuable to investigative journalists and scrupulous users who pay attention to sources, but for most users the new feature won’t change anything.
Facebook drastically reconsidered its approach to political ads on its platform after the exposure of a network of fake accounts operated by so-called “troll factories” in Russia across social media platforms to artificially boost support for Donald Trump and discredit his opponent, Hillary Clinton, during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Last February, U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted 13 Russians and three companies for interfering in the election. The biggest social media operation was run by the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency, a company linked to the Kremlin.
But not all pernicious social media activity emanated from Russia. An 2018 investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and Buzzfeed News revealed a pro-Trump fake news network operated by teens in Macedonia.
Facebook might be a bit late with its new transparency policy for the time of the 2019 Ukraine presidential election, as the election campaign has been running for months now. But its benefits may show over time, as Ukrainians go to the polling stations again in fall to choose the new parliament.
It could also help stem the flow of propaganda coming from Russia at other times.
After Russia launched its war in the eastern Donbas and occupied Crimea in 2014, Ukraine was attacked by a Russian propaganda machine that manipulated facts and manufactured hoaxes.
Ukrainian authorities banned Russian TV channels and radio stations on its territory and blocked social networking sites Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki. A lot of Russian news websites can’t be accessed from Ukraine.
But risks remain.
Earlier in January, Facebook announced the removal of 107 fake accounts, pages, and groups, as well as 41 fake accounts on Instagram, a social medium owned by Facebook, that, while originating in Russia, targeted users in Ukraine. The accounts were run by individuals who masqueraded as Ukrainians sharing news of general interest. Over the whole of 2018, they spent around $25,000 on ads.
