Snapchat chief executive officer (CEO) Evan Spiegel has announced that the company will fact-check political ads on its platform.
CEO Evan Spiegel said that a dedicated team at Snapchat will fact-check all political campaign ads on the platform. The announcement follows growing criticism faced by other tech companies for their policies ahead of the 2020 US presidential elections.
Facebook has previously announced that it will not fact-check political ads while Twitter has decided to ban political ads entirely. Spiegel said the company tried to "create a place" for ads in order to engage young people in politics.
In September, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg argued that the company would not fact-check because it would treat all posts by politicians as "newsworthy content" that should "be seen and heard". This position has attracted criticism from US politicians and it partially went back on its stance by removing a fake content posted by one candidate.
On the other hand, Jack Dorsey, chief executive officer (CEO) of Twitter announced in late October that the company will stop accepting political ads. In a tweet, Jack Dorsey discussed the company’s stand on political ads, writing: “We’ve made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally. We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought.”
To prepare for the upcoming 2020 US presidential election, Snapchat launchad a new library containing political and issue-based ads in September. The political ads library will be available for download as a spreadsheet on Snap’s website.
Snap’s ad archives will feature information, such as the name and address of who paid for the ads as well as the run date, money spent, ad impressions, and the demographic targeted. The library will contain 2018 ads but will also feature an ongoing archive for 2019, which will include ads sold and run globally.
