As Facebook continues to battle election interference and the misuse of its platform for political purposes, it has now announced that new restrictions on political advertising will be extending to more regions globally.
According to a report from Reuters this week, Facebook will be implementing new ad regulations in several regions within the year, as local elections begin there. Specifically, it will be bringing restrictions to Nigeria, Ukraine, and the European Union as a whole, in the next few months. Each region will have different parts of the restrictions in place and at different times, based on local laws.
For example, in Nigeria only advertisers who are “located in the country will be able to run electoral ads.” This policy will come into force this week. The same policy applied to to Ireland with its referendum last May, and Ukraine will get the policy in February. However, policies in these new regions will not be as comprehensive as ‘Issues Ads’ policies that are currently in place in the US. Some regions, however, will get the ‘Ad Archive,’ listing all ads run by politically affiliated groups for seven years from the day they were posted.
So far, Facebook’s efforts have been fruitful, despite some loopholes that have helped some groups to run ads for candidates. In any case, Facebook is still working on improving it’s policies, as well as looking at further regions that will require such policies soon. In addition to further regulations in India, Nigeria, Ukraine, and the EU, Facebook is also looking at Australia, Indonesia, Israel and the Philippines which will be facing votes over the year.
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