Facebook’s post-Cambridge Analytica woes have caused major consternation to their own policy and guidelines team. The drive for transparency, as outlined by Mark Zuckerberg, has forced the social network’s hand. This latest push towards advertising transparency will affect anyone who funds political-based ads on Facebook. 

According to Facebook, the move is designed to help counter the challenges posed by actors involved in election tampering and disruption – as evidenced during the Brexit and Trump elections. In the run up to the Brazilian and US elections this fall, Facebook has launched a real-time war room to help combat negative content and ads on Facebook.

The company stated: “The work we are doing in the war room builds on almost two years of hard work and significant investments, in both people and technology, to improve security on Facebook, including during elections. Our machine learning and artificial intelligence technology is now able to block or disable fake accounts more effectively – the root cause of so many issues. We’ve increased transparency and accountability in our advertising. And we continue to make progress in fighting false news and misinformation. That said, security remains an arms race and staying ahead of these adversaries will take continued improvement over time. We’re committed to the challenge.”