After scandals such as Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, leaders in the industry have made some changes to improve transparency on the Internet. We have recently told you that Facebook has introduced a new API to facilitate the analysis of advertising campaigns and Google has published a database of political ads. Now, Twitter has announced a change to its rules that will affect the way political ads are displayed on the platform.
As explained in the official statement, the new announcement policy will have a direct impact on the political candidates, which must be clearly identified and show that they live in the United States. In addition, the new policy will also affect advertisements that focus on legislative issues of national importance and make their purpose clear.
The idea behind Twitter is to improve transparency in the social network by identifying all tweets that have been paid for political purposes. Despite the fact that it has been pointed out so far that the publications are advertised, we had no further information. From now on Twitter will show who paid for the ad and place it in its Advertising Transparency Center together with further details about the campaign.
This is undoubtedly a necessary measure to ensure transparency in social networks, especially when one considers the influence that social networks can have on the election result, which has been confirmed in recent events.