In its moves to comply with Bill C-76, the social-media giant will require anyone running political ads ahead of October vote to verify they are Canadian and provide information about who is paying for the ad
The social-media giant believes its plans could prevent the kind of foreign political interference that has put the company in the crosshairs of global regulators.Facebook will force Canadian political advertisers to prove their identity and reveal the source of their funds in an effort to prevent foreign interference in the upcoming federal election.
The social-media giant has also convened a cross-partisan group of high-profile Canadians to come up with a list of hot-button issues likely to be debated during the election, which Facebook’s automated systems will use to help flag unverified advertisers who might try to slip through the system. “It’s quite clear that it places the onus of responsibility on political advertisers to provide online platforms with the information we need in order to comply," Kevin Chan, Facebook’s head of public policy for Canada, said in an interview.
Facebook was among the few U.S. tech firms to back the Liberal government’s legislation, which mirrors work the company started in the wake of revelations Russian trolls had abused its platform to spread divisive political messages during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Mr. Chan said Facebook will likely cast a wide net to identify political ads."If you’re talking about any issue that actually has some connection to a campaign, then I think we need to be cautious and we need to be broad in providing people with that level of transparency,” he said.
Mr. Chan defended the company’s decision to exclude some details from its public archive. The demographic details it offers are the same types of information advertisers typically request to judge the performance of an ad, and are good indicators of the kind of people advertisers were actually trying to target, he said.
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