‘Facebook will now manually approve all advertising of a political nature’

From now on, Facebook is reportedly going to have all advertisements in the fields of politics, religion, ethnicity and social issues manually approved by people before showing them online. Most advertisements of other natures go through an automated system.

It is not stated exactly what the advertisements are tested for. Facebook announced the decision in an email to advertisers on Saturday, according to a report from news site Axios. Facebook warns that the measure will mean that such ad campaigns can be used less quickly. Recently, it appeared that the ads bought by Russians were also shown on Instagram, which is owned by Facebook.

The internet giant has been the subject of several different investigations into Russia’s meddling in the US presidential election earlier this year. It is suspected that Russia bought ads from Facebook containing messages that matched President Donald Trump’s campaign points. Special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating this, as are committees of Congress. Recent research suggests that such commercials were key to Trump’s victory in the states of Michigan and Wisconsin, which in turn were important to his overall victory.

At the same time, the US Senate is working on legislation that will make it mandatory to provide more detailed information about its origin in a politically tinted ad, Axios writes.