Facebook just announced additional changes to its political advertising rules in order to "protect elections and prepare for the US 2020 election." The changes include strengthening the process to become authorized as an advertiser and providing more information to the public about each advertiser.
In order to address situations where advertisers have attempted to put misleading "Paid for by" disclaimers on their ads (which is currently required by Facebook's policies), starting in mid-September, advertisers will need to provide more information about their organization before Facebook reviews and approves their proposed disclaimer. If an advertiser does not provide this information by mid-October, Facebook will no long run its advertising. Facebook says that this new process "will help us confirm the legitimacy of an organization and provide people with more details about who's behind the ads they are seeing."
Advertisers will have a number of options for providing more information to Facebook about the organization's identity. If the organization provides a tax ID number, a government website domain that matches an e-mail ending in .gov or .mil, or a Federal Election Commission ID number, the organization will be allowed to use its registered organization name in disclaimers and the "i" icon that appears in the upper right-hand corner of its ads will read "Confirmed Organization."
For advertisers that don't have those credentials, Facebook will accept a verifiable phone number, business email, mail-deliverable address and a business website with a domain that matches the email. Facebook will also accept the Page Admin's legal name on the organization's personal identification document, but, in that situation, Facebook won't allow the advertiser to use the organization's name in disclaimers. For advertisers don't provide government identification, the "i" icon will read "About this ad" instead of "Confirmed Organization."
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