What Is Honest Ads Act? Plan To Make Online Ads Transparent Introduced

A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the United States Senate introduced Thursday the Honest Ads Act in an attempt to create stricter rules and increase transparency for political advertisements placed online.

The bill—sponsored by Senators Mark Warner, D-VA, Amy Klobuchar, D-MN, and John McCain, R-AZ—will aim to align the rules for online advertising with standards set for advertising in other forms of media including television and radio.

If passed, the Honest Ads Act would require online advertising platforms—including Google and Facebook—to include disclosures that identify who purchased an ad. It would also require the ad platforms to maintain a public file of ads about candidates and political issues.

Under the rules established by the bill, any entity that spends more than $500 on online ads during a single election cycle would be subject to the new disclosures.

“If a candidate or a cause buys an ad on TV, the same rules should apply if they buy it on Facebook or Google or on Twitter,” Senator Klobuchar said during a press conference unveiling the new proposal.

The Honest Ads Act is the first piece of proposed legislation that appears to be a direct response to reports that Russian entities purchased political advertisements that appeared on social networks and across the web—served up through Facebook, Twitter and Google—in the lead up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Last month, Facebook revealed that it discovered at least $100,000 in ad spending from June 2015 to May 2017, which were linked to 3,000 ads. The propaganda was traced back to nearly 500 inauthentic accounts and pages operated out of Russia.

The social network provided information about the advertising campaign to Congress as well as to FBI Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is heading up the independent investigation into links between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.

Recent reports have suggested the advertisements purchased by Russia and run on Facebook during the 2016 campaign reached as many as 10 million Americans, and about half of the ads were seen before the presidential election.

“With every new story about Russian bots or bogus information or shadowy ads we don’t know the source of, we need to acknowledge the nature of politics and campaigning is changing,” Senator Warner said. Klobuchar echoed the sentiment, stating, “We understand that election security is national security.”

The Senate bill has already received the backing of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. The organization said the proposed bill would “address glaring gaps” in election law and allow voters to be more engaged and informed.

“The 2016 elections exposed glaring holes in our ability to police foreign intervention in US elections, and these bills are an appropriate, bipartisan disclosure remedy,” Trevor Potter, president of Campaign Legal Center and a former Republican Chairman of the Federal Election Commission, said in a statement.

Tech companies have so far been mum on the bill. Facebook’s vice president of US public policy Erin Egan said in a statement that the company “stand[s] with lawmakers in their effort to achieve transparency in political advertising,” and is already taking its own steps to address its advertising platform.

A spokesperson for Twitter did not address the Honest Ads Act specifically but said “We look forward to engaging with Congress and the FEC on these issues.”