WASHINGTON — A new bipartisan bill proposed Thursday would require online platforms to publish information about advertisers, a key issue as investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election continues.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va. – the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee — and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., joined forces with Sen. John McCain, R.-Ariz, to propose the Honest Ads Act in response to reports that Russian companies secretly purchased political ads during the 2016 presidential election in an attempt to foster discord among American voters and influence the election.
“This is an issue of national security,” Klobuchar said. “Russia attacked us and will continue to use different tactics to undermine our democracy and divide our country, including by purchasing disruptive online political ads.”
The bill would require Facebook and other social media networks to maintain a public archive of campaign ads published on their platforms by purchasers who spend more than $500. The archive would include a copy of each advertisement, a description of each ad’s intended target audience, the contact information of the purchaser and other relevant information.”
At the end of the day, it is not too much to ask that our most innovative digital companies work with us by exercising additional judgment and providing some transparency,” Warner said. He told reporters Thursday that he believes that disclosure is the “tip of the iceberg” in terms of election interference on social media.
Facebook, the nation’s largest social media platform, recently disclosed that Russian companies purchased $100,000 in political advertisements on the site that focused on exacerbating differences and discord among American voters. Some of the data about those ads have since been deleted. “The content and purchasers of those online advertisements are a mystery to the public,” the senators said in a statement.
The bill would also amend previous campaign finance law to subject digital advertisements to the same disclosure and transparency requirements as TV and radio communications and would require digital platforms to “make reasonable efforts” to ensure that the ads it displays are not purchased by foreign nationals.
Describing election security as “a national security issue,” Klobuchar and Warner said that they felt confident the legislation could garner enough support to pass the Republican-majority Senate.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had no immediate comment on the bill.
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