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<\/div>SAN FRANCISCO \u2014 Facebook has decided not to limit how political ads can be targeted to specific groups of people.<\/p>\n
These steps appear unlikely to assuage critics \u2014 including some of the company’s rank and file employees \u2014 who say Facebook has too much power and not enough limits when it comes to its effects on elections and democracy itself.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Since last fall, Facebook has insisted that it won’t fact-check political ads, a move that critics say gives politicians license to lie in ads that can’t be easily monitored by outsiders.\u00a0<\/p>\n
CEO Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly argued that \u201cpolitical speech is important\u201d and that Facebook doesn’t want to interfere with it.<\/p>\n
Google, the digital ads leader, is limiting political-ad targeting to broad categories such as sex, age and postal code.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Facebook said in a blog post Thursday that it considered limiting custom audience targeting, known as microtargeting, for political ads. But the social network said it learned about their importance for \u201creaching key audiences\u201d after conducting outreach with political campaigns from both major parties in the U.S., political groups and nonprofits. <\/p>\n
The company said it was guided by the principle that \u201cpeople should be able to hear from those who wish to lead them, warts and all, and that what they say should be scrutinized and debated in public.\u201d<\/p>\n
Facebook does plan to let users choose to see \u201cfewer\u201d political and social-issue ads, although it won’t let people exclude them entirely. It’s also going to let people choose whether or not to see ads, political or otherwise, from advertisers targeting them using their contact details such as email address or phone number. <\/p>\n
The company is also tweaking its ad library so people can search for exact phrases and limit results using filters such as ad-audience size, dates and regions reached. <\/p>\n
Sam Jeffers, co-founder of Who Targets Me, an advocacy group researching political advertising, said Facebook was wise to permit microtargeting for political ads, despite some calls for a ban.<\/p>\n
He said it was better to provide more information on ads because it would give more insight into the actors behind them and their strategies. Facebook has made a start in that direction by adding information on an ad’s audience size, but it should give much more explanation about targeted ads, which he said are based on databases cross-referencing people\u2019s emails with, for example, their voting history and credit scores.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy making it easier for you to understand what data\u2019s in there, you can also understand what the advertiser\u2019s intent was,\u201d Jeffers said.<\/p>\n
Facebook says 85% of targeted advertising campaigns by U.S. presidential candidates are aimed at audiences of more than 250,000 people. But given that the 2016 election was effectively decided by roughly 100,000 voters in three or four states, Jeffers said, Facebook should do more to let people monitor political campaigns and their advertising in real time. <\/p>\n
Jeffers also said he welcomed the improvements to the ad library, \u201cassuming that people actually bother to use it.”<\/p>\n
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The changes related to ad disclosures will go into effect over the next three months in the U.S. and other countries where Facebook puts the \u201cpaid for by\u201d disclaimers on political ads. The political-ad controls won’t roll out in the U.S. until early summer; the company will \u201ceventually\u201d expand them to other regions.<\/p>\n
AP<\/b><\/p>\n
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