Facebook has made its advertising policies stricter a week before CEO Mark Zuckerberg faces Congress. The social media giant stated the new rules would make it harder for rogue operatives to use fake accounts to promote their divisive views.
Advertisers endorsing political or social issues will be required to verify their identity as well as location. In a Facebook post, Zuckerberg said, “This will make it much harder for people to run pages using fake accounts, or to grow virally and spread misinformation or divisive content that way.”
Facebook has received a lot of heat for allowing Russian operatives to spread misinformation during the U.S., Presidential elections in 2016. Lawmakers in the U.S., are working on a legislation to force social media companies to be more transparent about who is buying certain ads.
This comes after a whistle blower alleged a political consultancy named Cambridge Analytica used data to rig the 2016 U.S., elections. In the first public appearance after the scandal surfaced, Zuckerberg put up a post on Facebook and said the company, “made mistakes, there’s more to do, and we need to step up and do it.”
The Facebook head did not list the number of mistakes but said an investigation would be launched. Since the data was leaked through personality test apps, Facebook will review each of the apps on their platform. The company has since stopped giving researchers access to Facebook data. Initially, it was allowed by the social media site for academic reasons.
Zuckerberg also said he was willing to testify before the U.S., Congress and implement harsher Government regulations. The scandal cost Facebook a heavy some of $ 45 billion of its stock market value.
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