“Facebook Is Now The Federal Election Commission, But With More Secrets”

Paul Blumenthal for HuffPo:

In what looked like a presidential address with a distinct Silicon Valley aesthetic, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressed his private online nation of 2 billion users on Thursday from his glass-walled office space. He went live to explain how Facebook will henceforth respond to efforts by nation-states and private actors to use the social media platform to influence U.S. elections.

Zuckerberg detailed a nine-point plan. The most important of these new policies involves a requirement that “pages” disclose which ads they have purchased to run elsewhere on Facebook. Under federal law, online electoral ads are not currently required to provide the same level of disclosure or disclaimers as television and print ads do.

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