Twitter Adopts Facebook-Like Rules For Political Ad Transparency

Facebook has been the face of privacy issues and transparency around “fake news” and divisive political ads throughout 2018, but Twitter has its own problems to deal with, as well. The microblogging website announced Thursday that it would start enforcing new policies related to ad buyer verification and transparency.

According to Twitter’s company blog post, these new policies will go into place on Sept. 30 and will affect not only campaign ads, but ads that take a position on “issues of national importance.” They only apply to the United States for now, and those important issues can include gun laws, healthcare, abortion and anything else a candidate might feel the need to address ahead of the upcoming midterm elections.

Any person or group who buys ad space for campaigns or the issues listed above now needs to go through a certification process so Twitter knows who they are. They will also need to prove they live in the U.S., to potentially avoid the kind of foreign election interference that is alleged to have happened during the 2016 presidential election.

Facebook enacted similar policies for large page managers earlier this year.

Another tactic Twitter is taking from Facebook is showing all users exactly who paid for each political ad that shows up on their timelines. Any promoted tweets that users see as they scroll through Twitter can now carry an “issue” label. Those tweets will also show who bankrolled them. More detailed information about “issue” ads can be seen in Twitter’s Ads Transparency Center.

Again, Facebook started giving detailed information about who bought political ads and to whom they were targeted earlier this year. That site’s widely discussed Cambridge Analytica scandal involved targeted political advertisements based on stolen user data.

The one catch to all of this is that news outlets who merely report on issues rather than take a firm stance on them are exempt from these policies. Or, they could be after applying for exemption. Some critics may question Twitter’s judgment here, given that the site controversially is one of the few major platforms left that allows conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his InfoWars network to have accounts.