(Photo Credit: AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

Facebook revises advertising policies for political ads

From now on, Facebook will allow users to see fewer political ads. However, it won’t do much to monitor the contents of those ads, the social media giant announced in a series of policy updates on Thursday.

The announcement led some critics, including the tech blog CNET, to declare that Facebook will “let politicians lie.”

In a blog post, written by Rob Leathern, Director of Product Management at Facebook, the company said it will offer “greater transparency” around political ads instead of trying to filter the content.

“There has been much debate in recent months about political advertising online and the different approaches that companies have chosen to take. While Twitter has chosen to block political ads and Google has chosen to limit the targeting of political ads, we are choosing to expand transparency and give more controls to people when it comes to political ads,” Leathern wrote. “Unlike Google, we have chosen not to limit the targeting of these ads. We considered doing so, but through extensive outreach and consultations we heard about the importance of these tools for reaching key audiences from a wide range of NGOs, non-profits, political groups, and campaigns, including both Republican and Democratic committees in the US.”

Facebook will offer users a “transparency guide” where they can view more information about the political ad, such as how many people the advertiser intended to reach. Users can also filter political ads based on their interests, or choose to see similar ads.