Facebook will continue to allow targeted political ads

Facebook said it will continue to allow targeted political ads during the 2020 US presidential campaign and won’t prevent politicians from lying in ads they buy on the platform but will grant users more control over some of those that they are served when visiting its platform.

Unlike Twitter, which banned most kinds of political ads, Facebook simply decided to create more “transparency” about the way the company’s platform is used.

It will also be updating its Ad Library feature to make it easier to search and filter results and give users the ability to see “fewer political and and social issue ads”. Users will also be able to control whether they are included in “custom audience” advertising lists employed to target voters.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said recently that to limit political ads would amount to censorship, and that the company wanted to let politicians and political groups say almost whatever they want with certain exceptions for hate speech and other “harmful content.”

Former Facebook security chief Alex Stamos hoped that the company would at least limit “microtargeting” of political messages to very small groups of Facebook users as it allows politicians to present misleading messages to small but important blocks of voters, without much ability for others to track that messaging.

The news is likely to please Donald Trump, whose campaign has already complained about Google’s move to limit targeting.

Facebook announced the non-change in its policies via a blog post Thursday, which it attributed to ad executive Rob Leather.

“Ultimately, we don’t think decisions about political ads should be made by private companies, which is why we are arguing for regulation that would apply across the industry,” Leather wrote.

“In the absence of regulation, Facebook and other companies are left to design their own policies. We have based ours on the principle that people should be able to hear from those who wish to lead them, warts and all, and that what they say should be scrutinized and debated in public.”