Facebook Committed To Releasing Russia-Backed Political Ads

Facebook has been at the center of a heated debate about efforts by the Russian government to influence the 2016 presidential election by spreading ads promoting divisive views in key states. It’s claimed to have primarily used Facebook for this purpose, which would make sense, given that it’s the largest social network in the world. Facebook has been looking into the matter and it has now made a commitment to release Russia-backed political ads.

It has also been revealed in recent weeks that Facebook was probably not the only platform that was used for this. Google has found evidence of such ads on its services as well and so has Twitter.

Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg confirmed today that the company is fully committed to working with congressional investigators in the country to publicly release Russia-backed political ads.

“Things happened on our platform in this election that shouldn’t have happened,” she said, adding that the company has told Congress and the intelligence committees that when they are ready to release the ads, Facebook will help them.

Not only that, Facebook is also going to release information about how those divisive ads were targeted toward specific users in order to get the most mileage out of the campaigns. “We don’t want this kind of foreign interference,” she added.

Facebook has also taken various steps to ensure that something like this doesn’t happen again, they involve improving the monitoring mechanisms to prevent such ads from making their way to its network.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Web
Tags: Facebook