Facebook to publicly track political sponsored content after Bloomberg’s paid memes
Hindustan Times
February 28, 2020
Facebook
to publicly track political sponsored content after Bloomberg’s paid memes
Facebook
Inc will provide a way for people to track political sponsored content on
Facebook and Instagram ahead of the US presidential election, it said on
Thursday.
The
move comes after US Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg’s
campaign started paying popular meme accounts on Facebook-owned Instagram to
post content as part of its social media offensive ahead of the 2020 election.
In
tweets sent by Facebook director of product management Rob Leathern, the
company said it had added a new column
https://apps.crowdtangle.com/pgpublicldsfb/boards/2020uspresidentialcandidates
to its free social media tracking tool CrowdTangle to show sponsored content
for the presidential candidates.
Earlier
this month, Facebook said it would allow US -based political candidates to run
sponsored content on its social networking platforms, but that the content
would not be cataloged in its overall public ad library.
Bloomberg’s campaign, which is running a highly-funded digital offensive to try
and beat Republican President Donald Trump in November, has been working with a
collective of influential meme-makers called Meme 2020 to post sponsored
content on Instagram accounts over recent weeks.
In
order to be shown in the new CrowdTangle column, influencers will have to use
Facebook’s branded content tool, which allows them to more clearly tag in an
official sub-header that the post is a paid partnership.
Facebook
said it had reached out to the Bloomberg campaign asking them to use this tool
to properly disclose the posts.
“We
don’t have visibility into financial relationships taking place off our
platforms, which is why we’ve asked campaigns and creators to use our
disclosure tools. On the broader topic of political branded content, we welcome
clearer guidelines from regulators,” a Facebook spokeswoman said in a
statement.
The
US Federal Election Commission’s rules do not explicitly address social media
influencers, but it does say that public online communications advocating for
the election or defeat of a candidate for a fee must include a disclaimer to
inform who paid for the content.
The
Federal Trade Commission requires social media influencers and content creators
to clearly label sponsored posts.
“We push for maximum possible transparency across all of our content, and
require that creators adhere to FTC disclosure requirements on sponsored
content,” said Sabrina Singh, a spokeswoman for the Bloomberg campaign.
“Whenever
possible, we push creators to use platform-specific branded content disclosure
tools. However, basic business account tools are not made uniformly available
to all Facebook and Instagram creators, so in those cases we require the FTC
recommended copy disclosure.”
Facebook’s
Leathern confirmed in a tweet that creators who have previously violated the
company’s community standards may not be eligible to use the branded disclosure
tool.
Facebook
also said it was looking at how to increase transparency for branded content
run from private accounts. Facebook requires accounts to be public to run
branded content, but said it knows some accounts then switch to private.
The
tactic of paying influencers - people with large numbers of engaged social
media followers - to spread political messages or make content is also
gathering momentum among groups such as political action committees.
Other
controversial online tactics by the Bloomberg campaign include hiring hundreds
of digital organizers to send content on their own social media accounts, a practice
that came under scrutiny last week when Twitter suspended a group of
pro-Bloomberg accounts for violating its platform manipulation and spam policy.
The billionaire’s team also recently posted an invitation on influencer
marketplace Tribe, offering Bloomberg supporters a fixed fee of $150 to provide
videos or images to the campaign.
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