Facebook to publicly track political sponsored content after Bloomberg's paid memes
Source: Reuters
TECHNOLOGY NEWS FEBRUARY 27, 2020 / 3:27 PM / UPDATED 3 HOURS AGO
Facebook to publicly track political sponsored content after Bloomberg's paid memes
Elizabeth Culliford
4 MIN READ
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc (FB.O) will provide a way for people to track political sponsored content on Facebook and Instagram ahead of the U.S. presidential election, it said on Thursday.
The move comes after U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloombergs campaign started paying popular meme accounts on Facebook-owned Instagram to post content as part of its social media offensive ahead of the 2020 election.
In tweets sent by Facebook director of product management Rob Leathern, the company said it had added a new column here to its free social media tracking tool CrowdTangle to show sponsored content for the presidential candidates.
Earlier this month, Facebook said it would allow U.S.-based political candidates to run sponsored content on its social networking platforms, but that the content would not be cataloged in its overall public ad library.
Bloombergs campaign, which is running a highly-funded digital offensive to try and beat Republican President Donald Trump in November, has been working with a collective of influential meme-makers called Meme 2020 to post sponsored content on Instagram accounts over recent weeks.
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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-facebook/facebook-to-publicly-track-political-sponsored-content-after-bloombergs-paid-memes-idUSKCN20L2Z6