SAN FRANCISCO, June 28 (Xinhua) -- Facebook announced Thursday that it is taking steps to disclose more information about ads running on its platform in an effort to increase greater transparency for its users.
"Today we're making significant steps to bring more transparency to ads and Pages on Facebook," Rob Leathern, director of Product Management and Emma Rodgers, product marketing director, said in a statement.
The world's largest social media network will give people more information about any organization and the ads it's currently running, which will help prevent abuse on Facebook, they said.
They said users "can now see the ads a Page is running across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and our partner network, even if those ads aren't shown to you."
Facebook has put political and issue ads in a special class for even more transparency, where they will be archived for seven years and open to public scrutiny.
These news measures came after a scandal in which Facebook was criticized last year for allowing Russian trolls to purchase ads targeting the American electorate in the run-up to the 2016 general elections.
Thursday's announcement will make Facebook much more transparent than it was before, Facebook's Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said Thursday.
"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," she said.
Facebook decided in 2017 to reveal the source of every ad that runs on its platform, after it discovered almost 500 Russian-affiliated groups were using deceptive means to buy ads during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.
Facebook has since launched a massive campaign to clean politically-motivated ads running across the community.
