HYDERABAD: A large number of political advertisements put up by regional and national parties on Facebook have been/are regularly removed by the social media website for flouting its stringent policies on advertisements.
An analysis of the recently-launched “Ad Library”, a publicly searchable database of advertisements that have appeared on Facebook, show that all advertisements related to Telangana Rashtra Samithi and uploaded by its official Facebook page were removed by Facebook after a point of time.
That is because for ads related to politics or of national importance on the social media platform, the name of the person or the entity behind the ads has to be mentioned.
For instance, the justification Facebook provided for removing a TRS advertisement promoting its official Facebook page, went as: “This ad ran without a “Paid for by” label. After the ad started running, we determined that the ad was related to politics and issues of national importance and required the label. The ad was taken down.”
Last year, Facebook tightened its ad policy in a bid to prevent the recurrence of Russian interference it had observed during the 2016 United States elections, in which Donald Trump was elected president. Earlier in the month, officials from the company in India announced that users would now be able to see political ads with names under “published by” or “paid by”.
However, it is important to note that by the time the advertisements are removed, they have already reached quite a number of netizens. For instance, a now-removed TRS advertisement, which started running on October 9, 2018, had made close to 2 lakh-5 lakh “impressions” before it was taken down. The money spent on it ranged between `50,000-1,00,000.
The same has been happening for national parties like Indian National Congress or Bharatiya Janata Party; ads which are being run without a “paid for by” label are being removed by the social media giant.