SAN FRANCISCO �� Twitter said it will show detailed information about advertisers on the social media service, addressing concerns from lawmakers that the company let foreign meddlers run rampant during the U.S. presidential election campaigns.
Anyone now can search for a Twitter account and see all the ads it has run in the past seven days. For U.S. political advertisers, users will be able to see billing information, ad spending, demographic targeting data and the number of times tweets have been viewed. Twitter had been planning to create this "transparency center" since last October. Facebook has introduced similar features.
The changes are part of Twitter's broader efforts to clean up its service after lawmakers berated the company for not finding Russian influence-peddling through fake accounts and divisive ads during the 2016 campaigns. This week, the company began requiring more authentication from users. In May, it introduced stricter rules that require advertisers running political campaign ads for federal elections to identify themselves and certify they are in the U.S. The company has also banned ads from accounts owned by Russia Today and Sputnik.
Social media companies are rushing to regulate themselves as Congress works on new rules for digital political ads that have so far benefited from little oversight. Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., have introduced the Honest Ads Act to subject online political ads to disclosure rules like those that that govern TV and radio. Twitter and Facebook have endorsed the Honest Ads Act.
