UPDATED 05:27 EST / JUNE 29 2018

POLICY

Facebook and Twitter get serious about ad transparency

Following a tsunami of criticism over Russian propagandists using social media to foment division in America, both Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. this week launched ad transparency features.

On Thursday, Facebook announced its View Ads program, which will allow people to see every active ad on Facebook, Instagram and Messenger. Users will be able to see who is behind an ad, how much it cost and who it reached.

On each page users will also be able to see when that page was created and if it had undergone any name changes. If users see anything suspicious, there is an option to flag it.

“The hope of the announcement today, making Facebook much more transparent than it was before, is that it will hold us accountable, it will hold advertisers accountable, but it will also give people the ability to find things that maybe shouldn’t be up or find things that might be misleading so we can take action,” Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said at a press event.

“The vast majority of ads on Facebook are run by legitimate organizations — whether it’s a small business looking for new customers, an advocacy group raising money for their cause, or a politician running for office,” Rob Leathern, Facebook’s director of product management, said in a post. “But we’ve seen that bad actors can misuse our products, too.”

At the same time, Twitter launched it own Ads Transparency Center, which will allow users to search for any Twitter account and then see all the ads it has run over the last seven days. Where U.S. political advertisers are concerned, users will be able to see the number of impressions per tweet, how much was spent on the ad, to whom it was targeted and billing information.

You don’t even have to be a Twitter user to see this information because no login is required. Twitter had already announced this was coming, saying in October last year that it would  soon introduce “an industry-leading transparency center that will offer everyone visibility into who is advertising on Twitter, details behind those ads, and tools to share your feedback with us.”

Image: Facebook

A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE:

Support our mission to keep content open and free by engaging with theCUBE community. Join theCUBE’s Alumni Trust Network, where technology leaders connect, share intelligence and create opportunities.

  • 15M+ viewers of theCUBE videos, powering conversations across AI, cloud, cybersecurity and more
  • 11.4k+ theCUBE alumni — Connect with more than 11,400 tech and business leaders shaping the future through a unique trusted-based network.
About SiliconANGLE Media
SiliconANGLE Media is a recognized leader in digital media innovation, uniting breakthrough technology, strategic insights and real-time audience engagement. As the parent company of SiliconANGLE, theCUBE Network, theCUBE Research, CUBE365, theCUBE AI and theCUBE SuperStudios — with flagship locations in Silicon Valley and the New York Stock Exchange — SiliconANGLE Media operates at the intersection of media, technology and AI.

Founded by tech visionaries John Furrier and Dave Vellante, SiliconANGLE Media has built a dynamic ecosystem of industry-leading digital media brands that reach 15+ million elite tech professionals. Our new proprietary theCUBE AI Video Cloud is breaking ground in audience interaction, leveraging theCUBEai.com neural network to help technology companies make data-driven decisions and stay at the forefront of industry conversations.