Facebook is arguing that it should be exempt from campaign ad disclosure regulations. | AP Photos | AP Photos Facebook: Exempt us from FEC rules

Facebook, the company that has helped put so much of what was once private out in open on the web, is looking for a sort of corporate privacy setting of its own — the company is looking to ensure that it is exempt from federal election rules requiring campaign advertisements to include disclosures of who paid for them.

In a request to the Federal Election Commission made late last month, lawyers for the social networking powerhouse argued that the small ads on Facebook’s website should not have to include disclosures because of the limited amounts of room for text.


While it’s easy to include disclosures on a television ad, billboard or email, Facebook argues, it’s more difficult with the tiny ads posted along the side of its webpages. “With some mediums … - e.g. bumper stickers, buttons, pens, T-shirts, concert tickets, and text messages - it is inconvenient or impracticable to include a disclaimer,” three lawyers from the Washington office of the firm Perkins Coie write in their request for an advisory opinion from the FEC.

The company says it has made a conscious decision to keep the ads on its site small and less obtrusive to the user experience, and does not want to take away from that experience or penalize campaign advertisers. “Facebook gives a wide range of candidates and causes a voice where they would otherwise not be able to afford one through more traditional political advertising,” spokesman Andrew Noyes said in a statement to POLITICO. “We encourage the FEC to consider these benefits and other fundamental differences between some online ad formats and newspaper and TV advertising.”

Facebook’s request comes after the FEC ruled last year that short political ads purchased through Google’s AdWords service did not need to include disclosure of who bought them. At the time, Facebook offered its support for Google, using the same argument put forth in the new advisory opinion request.

An FEC spokeswoman said the agency’s commissioners could consider the request at a future public meeting.