Facebook pushes new rules for political advertising worldwide

Facebook is ramping up its new tightened restrictions on political advertising. 

About a year after the company first introduced its tools to increase "transparency" around political ads in the U.S., Facebook is expanding those rules worldwide.

According to the new policy, advertisers that buy ads related to elections or other political "issues" need to verify their identity with Facebook and disclose who paid for the ad. These ads, and the identity of their purchasers, are then preserved in Facebook's Ad Library for seven years, so that anyone can see who paid for a particular ad. 

This is part of Facebook's sweeping effort, following Russia's activity leading up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, to protect elections from foreign interference. Facebook has already been expanding some of these tools outside of the United States, but is now making them more widely available. The company is also ramping up enforcement of the policies, starting with countries that have significant elections coming up. Read more...