While Facebook has this week announced that its political ad transparency tools are being expanded to all regions, Twitter is also slowly broadening the scope of its political ad requirements and reporting, taking cues from coming elections and aligning with increases in campaigning.
Twitter's political ad transparency measures, which require pre-approval for the promotion of political messaging, and keep political ads on file in Twitter's Ad Transparency Center, are now in place in the US, EU, Australia, and India.
And from this week, they'll now also be implemented in Canada, ahead of that nation's upcoming election.
As explained by Twitter:
"Over the pre-election timeline - which begins June 30th and ends the day the election is officially called - we will be prohibiting all regulated political ads in Canada. During this period, our policy and enforcement teams will be building the necessary infrastructure and product support to ensure we are appropriately prepared for the critical election period. After the writ is dropped, we will allow regulated political advertising including issue advocacy ads, which will be published in our Ads Transparency Center in compliance with Canadian law."
Given the issues with the manipulation of political messaging ahead of the 2016 US Presidential Election, all platforms have been working to boost their security and monitoring measures, and ensure that there is an increased level of transparency and clarity around political ads. This is not only helpful, it's necessary - it's impossible to know what influence, exactly, that misinformation efforts have had in the outcome of various elections, but it's fairly clear that that have had an impact.
Anything that results in swaying such a significant element needs to be investigated - and while you may not think you've been influenced by such campaigns, chances are, you probably have.
The expansion of such regulations can only be a good thing - and while it won't eliminate the problems entirely, this, along with increased spam detection and removal measures at Twitter, will hopefully go a significant way towards improving this aspect.