Story Archive

Facing the Book

In the wake of allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, Facebook tightened its rules around political advertising, clamping down on any political advertising from foreign countries — and they’re implementing those restrictions in Europe ahead of the European Union elections. The EU Commission regularly runs ads throughout the bloc of 28 countries, but Facebook won’t allow that. “If the new rules are implemented in their current form, in practice our institutions would not be able to promote content on Facebook outside of Belgium,” says a letter signed by the general secretaries of the European Parliament, Commission and Council. “Our priority is to safeguard the integrity of elections against foreign interference,” says Richard Allan, Facebook’s Vice President of Global Policy Solutions. “The absence of uniform rules across the E.U. poses significant challenges, and our risk analysis showed us that requiring organizations to have a representative in each country where they run ads is an important safeguard. We continue to review the risks and how to mitigate them.” (MS/London Telegraph) ...Facebook is doing what it does best: the wrong thing, too late.