Zuckerberg announces broad changes to Facebook’s political ad policies

Facebook Inc chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced broad changes to the company's political ad policies yesterday, including increased human scrutiny as also an effort to give its two billion-strong user base more transparency into who is paying for which political advertising.

Zuckerberg made the announcement in a Facebook Live video, along with the company's decision yesterday to release 3,000 Russia-linked ads to congressional committees investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. The company disclosed on 6 September that Russian agents bought the Facebook ads during the campaign, but had earlier shown congressional staffers only samples of the ads and not handed over the entire cache.(See: Facebook says Kremlin-linked group bought ads during 2016 presidential elections)

''I don't want anyone to use our tools to undermine democracy,'' Zuckerberg said in the video. ''That's not what we stand for. The integrity of our elections is fundamental to democracy around the world.''

Facebook shares slipped slightly after-hours to $171.10. The company's shares are up 48.7 per cent this year, nearly five times the S&P 500 index SPX, which has gained 11.7 per cent.

The most significant change announced yesterday is the company's move to provide more transparency for its users, according to Zuckerberg. In future, Facebook advertisers buying political ads will need to disclose which page paid for the ad, and users will be able to visit a page and view all the ads that are running to any audience on the platform.

Meanwhile, Colin Stretch, general counsel of Facebook, said in a piece posted to the News section of the Facebook website: ''Two weeks ago, we announced we had found more than 3,000 ads addressing social and political issues that ran in the US between 2015 and 2017 and that appear to have come from accounts associated with a Russian entity known as the Internet Research Agency. We subsequently made clear that we are providing information related to those ads, including the ad content itself, to the Special Counsel investigating allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 US election. Since then, some people have asked why we aren't sharing the content of the ads more broadly.

''After an extensive legal and policy review, today we are announcing that we will also share these ads with congressional investigators. We believe it is vitally important that government authorities have the information they need to deliver to the public a full assessment of what happened in the 2016 election. That is an assessment that can be made only by investigators with access to classified intelligence and information from all relevant companies and industries - and we want to do our part. Congress is best placed to use the information we and others provide to inform the public comprehensively and completely.

''This has been a difficult decision. Disclosing content is not something we do lightly under any circumstances. We are deeply committed to safeguarding user content, regardless of the user's nationality, and ads are user content. Federal law also places strict limitations on the disclosure of account information. As our biannual transparency reports make clear, we carefully scrutinise all government data requests, from here and abroad, and we push back where they do not adhere to those legal limitations. And, of course, we also recognise and support the important work of government investigations and take care not to take steps, like public disclosures, that might undermine them.