{"id":14908,"date":"2019-04-26T21:03:17","date_gmt":"2019-04-26T21:03:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/facebook-says-its-open-to-advertising-u-turn-for-the-eu-elections-enabling-cross-border-campaigns.html"},"modified":"2019-04-26T21:03:17","modified_gmt":"2019-04-26T21:03:17","slug":"facebook-says-its-open-to-advertising-u-turn-for-the-eu-elections-enabling-cross-border-campaigns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/facebook-says-its-open-to-advertising-u-turn-for-the-eu-elections-enabling-cross-border-campaigns.html","title":{"rendered":"Facebook says it\u2019s open to advertising u-turn for the EU elections, enabling cross-border campaigns"},"content":{"rendered":"

Facebook\u2019s <\/a> VP of global affairs and communications, Nick Clegg, today said the social network \u2014 likely in response to pressure from European officials \u2014 is \u201copen\u201d to changing its rules on election advertising for European Union elections that will take place on May 23, by allowing cross-border campaigning rather than requiring those running ads in a specific market to be registered as businesses in those markets. But Clegg added that it will require getting approval from individual national election administrators before changing the rules.<\/p>\n

Clegg said that he has been in talks with Antonio Tajani, the president of the European Parliament. \u201cWe built our system around national elections,\u201d he said, but now the company is considering \u201ca temporary exemption for a prescribed list of institutions. We are open to doing that but need consent from the national election administrations so that we can move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

The about-face on advertising comes less than three months<\/a> after Facebook first introduced its tightened election rules, underscoring just how hard it\u2019s been for the company to figure out what to do right.<\/p>\n

Clegg \u2014 himself a former member of the European Parliament when he was still a politician \u2014 was speaking as part of a wider update<\/a> that Facebook was providing to the media about how it is progressing in its work to provide more transparency around elections, part of a longer effort to build better relations with Brussels<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Clegg noted that Facebook\u2019s\u00a0preparations for the EU elections \u201crepresent one of the most sophisticated we\u2019ve ever deployed\u201d in a climate of \u201cheightened polarization.\u201d<\/p>\n

The announcement should not come as a surprise. Last week, it emerged<\/a> that Facebook had received a letter from no less than three secretaries general \u2014 Martin Selmayr from the European commission, Jeppe Tranholm-Mikkelsen from the Council of the EU and Klaus Welle from the European Parliament \u2014 which took it to task specifically over its election advertising policy, and how it actually ran counter to the purpose of a union of countries, as the European Union is.<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s misstep in this case underscores one of the weakness of its approach: As a huge global company with more than 2 billion users and a lot of algorithms, it misses a lot of nuance and makes errors when trying to apply blanket policies globally. (It\u2019s also a disappointing gap given Clegg\u2019s own background.)<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the European Commission told TechCrunch that its observations and evaluations of how Facebook \u2014 along with other social media companies \u2014 is responding to election campaigning will not stop with today\u2019s news.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will evaluate the actions taken in April in a few weeks\u2019 time once the next progress reports have been submitted by the platforms,\u201d he said. \u201cThis monthly stocktaking under the self-regulatory Code of Practice, signed by online platforms in September 2018, is part of our joint efforts, in particular ahead of the European elections. The Commission therefore welcomes all efforts undertaken by the platforms fulfilling this objective.\u201d<\/p>\n

Facebook has been painted as an unhelpful partner in years past for allowing its platform to be used to spread fake news and run misleading ad campaigns from malicious foreign entities, which some believe has had a material impact on the outcome of democratic voting. Under pressure from regulators, governments and the public, the company has been trying to change its ways.<\/p>\n

Clegg noted that nearly 40 teams are working on combating hate speech and other abusive content and that \u201cmillions of fake accounts\u201d had been removed. A \u00a0new operations center established in Dublin, meanwhile, is helping to manage the work of some 21 fact-checking organizations, including five new ones announced this week, now covering 14 languages in the European Union. Those 14 languages are Croatian, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish.<\/span><\/p>\n

And there is also the company\u2019s database that lets people click on ads to see more about them. Clegg didn\u2019t claim that the work was finished \u2014 there are more than 14 languages in the EU, for starters \u2014 but it at least \u201cputs us in a stronger position.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Interestingly, the EC is not completely critical of all of Facebook\u2019s practices, and spoke out in support of the fact that it\u2019s making efforts to be more transparent:<\/p>\n

\u201cTo protect the integrity of our elections, transparency measures by platforms to highlight political ads are justified,\u201d said the spokesperson. \u201cTransparency of political advertising is one of the objectives of the election package and the Code of Practice on Disinformation. We would like to underline that the Code of Practice on Disinformation does not limit political advertising to advertisers residing only in a given Member State.<\/p>\n

\u201cAny such decision by social media platforms is a commercial choice at the discretion of the company. It\u2019s good to see some movement but we are expecting to see more details about Facebook\u2019s proposals and stand ready to discuss them. It is important to address the issue swiftly, in order to ensure that the pan-European election campaign is conducted openly and transparently. The European Union institutions and bodies are not \u2013 by their very nature \u2013 organisations or entities which could compromise the integrity of the European Parliament elections.\u201d<\/p>\n

Facebook itself has been in hot water set on a slow boil by regulators for a while now. Just this week, three new investigations<\/a>\u00a0into the company\u2019s practices over data privacy came to light, including an investigation in Europe by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner<\/a> (Facebook\u2019s global headquarters is in Ireland) over how Facebook was storing some users of Instagram and What passwords in plain text internally.<\/p>\n

This week it also said that it would set aside $3 billion<\/a> for a fine it\u2019s being charged by the Federal Trade Commission in the U.S. over how it mishandled user privacy \u2014 unfortunately, just a drop in the bucket for a company that reported more than $15 billion in revenues this past quarter.<\/p>\n

More to come.<\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunch\/social\/~3\/AOvdyBCOdy0\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Facebook\u2019s VP of global affairs and communications, Nick Clegg, today said the social network \u2014 likely in response to pressure from European officials \u2014 is \u201copen\u201d to changing its rules <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[10,7,14,15,6,12,11],"class_list":["post-14908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-update","tag-computer-news","tag-downloads","tag-microsoft-download-news","tag-networking-updates","tag-technology-update","tag-wordpress-plugin-download","tag-wordpress-theme-download"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t