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Zuckerberg: Facebook Backs Honest Ads Act, US Proposal to Regulate Political Ads

Facebook chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg has voiced support for new regulations in the United States that would require people running political ads on the platform to clearly identify themselves and their location.
Sputnik

"Election interference is a problem that's bigger than any one platform and that's why we support the Honest Ads Act," the executive wrote in a Facebook blog post Friday. 

Watchdog: Cambridge Analytica Violated US Election Laws

Zuckerberg's endorsement of the Honest Ads Act comes days before he is slated to testify before Congress on April 11 about the company's use and distribution of people's data. The proposed bill regulates political ads online the same way as if the ad appeared on television, in print, or on the radio.

This week, Facebook announced that up to 87 million people's data had been harvested by third parties as a result of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

"With important elections coming up in the US, Mexico, Brazil, India, Pakistan and more countries in the next year, one of my top priorities for 2018 is making sure we support positive discourse and prevent interference in these elections," Zuckerberg said Friday. 

Moving forward, the company will require people who want to run political ads to be verified with Facebook. "Any advertiser who doesn't pass [the test] will be prohibited from running political or issue ads. We will also label them and advertisers will have to show you who paid for them. We're starting this in the US and expanding to the rest of the world in the coming months," Zuckerberg wrote. 

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