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Bloomberg
Twitter Inc. is bringing greater transparency to advertising on its social network, addressing a significant concern of Congressional investigators probing foreign meddling during the 2016 US presidential elections. Twitter is creating a new “transparency centre†that will dedicate a section to political ads that will show how much each campaign spent on advertising, the identity of the organisation funding the campaign, and what demographics the ad targeted.
Political ads will be required to identify their campaigns and will be indicated on Twitter with a different look and feel, the company said. The company said it will introduce stronger penalties for advertisers who violate policies.
Twitter’s efforts mark one of the biggest changes among social media companies to respond to concerns from the US government that Russia used their platforms to spread discord in the election. Facebook Inc. has already pledged a sweeping overhaul of political advertising and said it will give Congress all the evidence it has on the campaigns. It’s also hiring 4,000 workers to improve the vetting of online advertising and identification of fake accounts.
Criticism has been mounting that the platforms have been ill-equipped to deal with foreign tampering. Twitter was blasted last month by US. Senator Mark Warner for a “deeply disappointing†and “inadequate†presentation into suspicious Russian activity on its network. At the time, Twitter said it disabled 22 accounts after reviewing information from Facebook showing connections to 450 bogus accounts on that company’s social network. The company also disclosed that news site Russia Today spent $274,100 in US ads
in 2016.
Twitter’s new efforts are “a good first step, particularly public disclosure of ads info,†Warner tweeted. “Online political ads need more transparency & disclosure.†Beyond politics, Twitter’s transparency centre will show all ads that are currently running on the platform, how long they’ve been running, who created them, and which ones are targeted to users.