Chennai: Ahead of Lok Sabha elections, Facebook Inc has toughened up the rules governing political advertisements in India to create more transparency.
In a statement, the social media giant said users will see political advertisements with ‘published by’ and ‘paid by’ disclaimers.
The move comes weeks after Facebook said that it would extend some of its political advertising rules and tools for curbing election interference to India, Nigeria, Ukraine and the European Union before significant votes in these places in the next few months.
Users will be able to access a library that allows them to search and find out more about political advertisements such as how much is spent on them and the demographics of advertising views, Facebook said.
People will soon also be able to see country locations of users who manage Facebook pages that carry political ads.
“By increasing transparency around ads and pages on Facebook, we hope to increase accountability for advertisers, help people assess the content they’re seeing and prevent future abuse in elections,” Facebook said. The new features and policy becomes effective 21 February.