india

Updated: Feb 08, 2019 07:46 IST

Advertisements that reference political personalities, political parties and elections on social networking site Facebook in India will now carry disclaimers about who published and paid for the ad, the company said on Thursday.

India is a key market for Facebook with 217 million people using the platform every month.

“This will give people more information about who’s responsible for the ads they see. People can also access a searchable ad library to learn more about ads related to politics, including range of impressions and spend and demographics of who saw the ad.We’re committed to creating a new standard of transparency and authenticity for political advertising on Facebook and Instagram. Ahead of India’s general elections, we’re making big changes to ads,” said Shivnath Thukral, Public Policy Director, (India & South Asia) and Sarah Schiff , Product Manager at Facebook in a joint blogpost published by the company.

The Facebook ad library will be a repository of information about the ad, including its content, the start and end date of the ad campaign, performance data including range of impressions, range of spend, and information about who saw the ad, including age, gender and location across India.

In December, the company asked advertisers to verify their identity and location to be able to run political ads on Facebook .

“In the coming weeks, people will start seeing the country locations of the people managing Pages that run political ads to better understand the origin of the Page,” stated the blogpost.

From 21 February only advertisers who have completed authorizations and disclosed who is responsible for an ad will be allowed to run political ads in India.

“We will remove political ads running without a disclaimer in News Feed and will place them in the Ads Library,” the company said. Users can also help by reporting ads that are violating Facebook’s political ads policy.

Facebook and Google dominate the Rs 10,819 crore digital advertising market in India.

Concerns around protection of user privacy, freedom of speech, harassment by Internet trolls, spread of misinformation and fake news, have plagued Facebook globally and in India.

In 2018, the government warned social media platforms such as Facebook of “stringent action” in case of any attempt to sway the country’s electoral process took place on their platform. Facebook has been ramping up its “election integrity” efforts in the country in the run up to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. For the recently concluded state elections held in Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram and Rajasthan, Facebook put together a “task force” to handle any incoming issues and escalations, top executives at the company said during a visit to India in January. Facebook is also trying to figure out physical locations to set up its election war room in different parts of the country in the run to the Lok Sabha elections.

Globally, Facebook had a physical war room in Menlo Park to monitor the Brazil elections and the US mid terms. “There are sophisticated actors who will keep trying to find ways to get around our system, and we just have to get smarter, there will never be a time where we can say we’ve got this, this is our new normal,” said Katie Harbath, Facebook’s global politics and government outreach director, said during her visit last month.

In December, Facebook took down 9 pages and 6 accounts in Bangladesh after it heard of some coordinated inauthentic activity and some tip-offs in the run up to their general elections held on 30 December.