Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Over the weekend, a familiar debate broke out over a Facebook policy decision. The company announced that ads made by influencers, on behalf of politicians, would be allowed on the platform so long as they were labeled as ads. The company will not, however, put those ads in its Ads Library, where they can be reviewed by the public. It’s not clear that anyone will review those ads outside of Facebook, as the Federal Elections Commission, which regulates political advertising, currently has no policy on influencer marketing. The influencer posts can be fact-checked, unless they contain the speech of a politician, in which case they cannot.
Got all that? Great.
I don’t know why you would build a whole public ads library, require a certain…