A Push for Advertisement Regulation
Online political advertisements are subject to much fewer rules than ones in television or newspapers, so it is much easier to get a propaganda like ad circulating the internet, than one elsewhere. A bill is being proposed to prevent this situation from happening, according an article from the Washington Times titled, Bipartisan Bill Pushes for Regulating Online Political Ads amid Russia Revelations. The reason for this surge in policy is due to the allegations that some people of Russia spent more than $100,000 of advisements on Facebook and other areas of the internet to influence the 2016 election. If this bill were to pass, no entity would be able to spend more than $500 on political ads; the groups purchasing ads also have to disclose information about themselves and the targeted audience. There was about $1.4 billion in online political ads alone for the election, so this bill is hoping to keep the integrity of those dollars intact.
As a Virginia Senator, Mark Warner said, “There will always be a case where there could be things that fall through the cracks. What we are trying to do here is start with this light torch… It’s our hope that social media companies will work with us.” Social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, are the cracks that these potentially biased ads could slip through, but these websites also make money from them. Google’s PageRank tries to only keep the relevant sources in ad spots; however, these political ads are reaching those areas. The adding of this bill would add in guidelines to the hub and authority scores, since now, instead of just the sources something points to, now reasoning and information about the advertisement will affect the price and standing of the ad. This bill will not only prevent these ads appearing prevalently on the web, but also decrease the links to these web pages the ads point to. Since, because of the PageRank algorithm, these political websites have fewer people clicking on them, then they will further spiral down, and be seen less and less, which is what this bill wants to achieve.
Source:https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/oct/19/bill-pushes-regulate-online-political-ads/