As the 2020 United States election approaches, Facebook Inc. has recently announced that it would allow American political candidates to post branded content on its platforms. However, these contents will not be catalogue in its advertising library.

Apparently, Facebook will now allow political groups and campaigns to utilize its branded content tool that enables social media influencers to tag their post as a paid partnership more clearly in the sub-header. This change comes on heels after the US Democratic presidential candidate’s recent social media activity, where Michael Bloomberg paid trending meme pages of Instagram to post content about him.

Reportedly, the strategy of using social media influencers for spreading political messages is lately gaining traction, however, the rules around it are still hazy. Speaking upon this, a Facebook spokesperson said that after learning about such campaigns, the company has decided to create a place for politically inspired branded content on its platforms.

In order to utilize Facebook's branded content tool, political groups or campaigns need to be recognized as political advertisers through ID verification method. Facebook has not classified this under advertising as it did not make money for Facebook directly, with the complete transaction being completed among the political parties and creators.

However, it requests content creators to abide by the guidelines and disclose paid partnerships.

Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) demands content creators and influencers to clearly categorize sponsored content. In addition to this, the FTC is also planning to gain public perspective on whether it should make changes in these rules and how effective are they.

Incidentally, Senator Elizabeth Warren slammed this idea by stating that these paid posts wouldn’t be publicly tracked. Whereas, Sabrina Singh, a Bloomberg campaign spokesperson, said that the campaign is explicitly clear that these posts are sponsored content.
 

Source Credit: https://www.livemint.com/companies/news/facebook-allows-us-political-candidates-to-run-sponsored-content-11581742924103.html