The government of Russia issued its response to Twitter’s decision last week to ban advertising from Russia Today and Sputnik due to findings by the U.S. intelligence community that those companies attempted to interfere with last November’s U.S. presidential election. Maria Zakharova, director of the Information and Press Department at Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, posted on Twitter and Facebook: “We view this as a further aggressive step aimed at blocking the activities of Russian TV channel Russia Today and the result of the pressure of part of the American intelligence, and the response will naturally follow.” (Adweek)
Under pressure in advance of hearings on Russian election interference, Facebook is moving to increase transparency for everyone who sees and buys political advertising on its site. (THR / AP)
Facebook’s new policies include labeling political ads so they’re easier to identify, and creating a catalogue of these and other ads so users can see how much advertisers are paying and who they are targeting. (Recode)
Political ads will also carry a tag that indicates which advertiser paid for them along with verified background information about their identity. The company also says it is building “machine learning tools” to track down and identify political advertisers who aren’t forthcoming with this information in the same way it does with other ads that violate its policies. (Mashable)