Following reports of a massive Russian misinformation campaign on Facebook during the U.S. presidential election, the world’s largest social network promised to do more in order to ensure that something like that doesn’t happen again. It’s now decided to add an additional verification step for election advertisers on its network. It will now start mailing out postcards to election advertisers in the United States so that the advertisers can verify that they’re in the United States.
Facebook has confirmed that it’s going to start sending out postcards by U.S. mail later this year to verify the identities and location of people who want to buy election-related ads on its platform.
The postcards will have a specific code that the advertisers will have to provide to Facebook before they can run ads that mention a specific candidate running for a federal office. Katie Harbath, Facebook’s global director of policy programs, did confirm that this requirement doesn’t apply to issue-based political ads.
“If you run an ad mentioning a candidate, we are going to mail you a postcard and you will have to use that code to prove you are in the United States,” Harbath confirmed at a recent conference f the National Association of Secretaries of State.
In a brief interview with Reuters, Harbath said that while this additional verification requirement “won’t solve everything,” it will go a long way in preventing bad actors from purchasing ads as part of a misinformation campaign.
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