Authorizing Advertisers to Run Issue Ads on Facebook and Making Pages More Transparent

Last fall, we announced several new advertising features and processes we're building to help ensure transparency and authenticity in political ads. These include:

1. View ads, which allows people to see all ads a Page is running, regardless of whether they're in the target audience
2. A new authorization process for political advertisers who want to run election-related ads
3. A searchable ads archive, where people will be able to see all political ads we've identified on Facebook

Today, we're expanding our process to require authorization for advertisers running political ads to also include those running issue ads. Issue ads are ads about political topics people are debating across the country. We are working with third parties to develop a list of key issues and will refine that list over time.

Soon, all political ads on Facebook and Instagram will have to come from an authorized advertiser. We started testing the authorization process this week, and people will begin seeing the label and additional information in the US later this spring. To get authorized, advertisers will need to complete the following steps:

1. Page admins and ad account admins will submit their government-issued ID and provide a residential mailing address for verification.
2. We’ll confirm each address by mailing a letter with a unique access code that only the admin's Facebook account can use.
3. Advertisers will have to disclose who paid for the ads.

Advertisers that don't clear the process will be banned from running political ads on our platforms until they get authorized. To start, this applies to US advertisers running ads that target people in the US. We plan to expand the authorization process to additional countries in the coming months.

People who see these types of political ads will notice a label that says “Political Ad” in the top left corner of the ad, with “Paid for by” information next to it.

We are building machine learning tools and adding more people to help find political advertisers that should have gone through the authorization process, but did not. We realize we won't catch every ad that should be labeled, and we encourage anyone that sees an unlabeled political ad to report it. People can do this by tapping the three dots in the top right corner of an ad and selecting “Report Ad.” If we determine that an ad is in fact a political ad, we will take it down until the advertiser completes the authorization process.

In Canada, we've been testing view ads, a feature that lets people see the ads a Page is running. View ads applies to all advertisers on Facebook, not just those running political ads, and we plan to launch this feature globally in June.

We're also adding a public, searchable political ads archive in the US in June. This will contain all ads with the "Political Ad" label, and will provide the image and text, as well as additional information like the amount spent and demographic information about the audience reached for each ad.

Today, we’re also announcing that people who manage Pages with large numbers of followers will need to be verified, and Pages that do not clear the process will no longer be able to post. We will also surface additional context about Pages to people. For example, you can see whether a Page has changed its name. We believe these efforts will make it more difficult for people to administer a Page using a fake account, which is strictly against our policies, and give people more information to consider when assessing the Page and its content.

Healthy civic discourse strengthens communities, and we know that it can thrive on Facebook when it's safe and authentic. Today's updates are a few of the important steps we're taking to prevent abuse and ensure that people have the context and information they need when viewing political content on our platforms.