Short answer, no, for now.
But is this a course of action that will come to Australia?
On Friday 27th October 2017, Facebook announce a change of advertising strategy in response to the allegations several “Russian political activists”, used supposed fake stories to alter the 2016 Presidential elections.
The new changes are for the USA at this stage, where anyone creating, or paying for the advertisement on Facebook, will be required to verify their identity as well as run disclosures on each ad.
In Australia, we already have regulations to do this, especially for the TV Broadcast space. FreeTV Australia has some strict processes governing to achieve this very outcome.
Whilst any political advertising in Australia does at this stage of writing this article, require to identify who is authorising and speaking the political ad, it isn’t so well policed in the social media realms.
The change here from Facebook, means that in the USA, they are actively placing boundaries on what a political advertisement must be, specifically the authorisation.
Will this affect us here in Australia?
No not really, as already the guidelines are to do this. So if *cough, when* Facebook decide to bring this global, here in Australia, it will have limited impact on how the Advertising industry operates. It may, dare I say, even produce some more positive results for the Australian audience.
