Facebook to hand over Russia-linked ads to Congress

Facebook declared that any ad related to Russia on the social media platform aimed at provoking tensions around last year’s US presidential election would be turned over to Congress.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Thursday that the company is cutting down on efforts people make to use the social media site to interfere with elections in the US or anywhere.

In a live video presentation streamed on his Facebook page, Zuckerberg said, “It is a new challenge with internet communities having to deal with nation states trying to subvert elections.”

He also listed some steps that can help avert manipulation of the social network including more transparency on political ads that appear on Facebook. “We’re going to bring Facebook to an even higher standard of transparency.”

“Not only will you have to disclose which page paid for an ad, but we will also make it so you can visit an advertiser’s page and see the ads they’re currently running to any audience on Facebook,” Zuckerberg continued.

According to AFP, earlier this month, Facebook agreed to give data regarding the ads from Russian entity known as the Internet Research Agency to special counsel Robert Mueller’s Investigation of the 2016 election. Finally, on Thursday, the company decided to hand over the data to congressional investigators.

Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch stated in a blog post, “We believe it is vitally important that government authorities have the information they need to deliver to the public a full assessment of what happened in the 2016 election.”

As per an internal Facebook review, Russia-linked fake accounts were utilized for buying ads that intended to intensify political clashes of the 2016 US presidential election. Around 470 accounts spent approximately $100,000 between June 2015 to May 2017 on deceptive and ambiguous ads. The accounts or pages that violated the Facebook policies were shut down.