NEW DELHI: Facebook Inc is toughening up the rules governing political advertisements in India to create more transparency ahead of the country’s general elections due before May, the social media giant said late on Thursday.

Users will see political advertisements with “published by” and “paid by” disclaimers, the company said in a statement.

The move comes weeks after Facebook said it would extend some of its political advertising rules and tools for curbing election interference to India, Nigeria, Ukraine and the European Union before significant votes in these places in the next few months.

Users will be able to access a library that allows them to search and find out more about political advertisements such as how much is spent on them and the demographics of advertising views, Facebook said.

People will soon also be able to see country locations of users who manage Facebook pages that carry political ads.

“By increasing transparency around ads and pages on Facebook, we hope to increase accountability for advertisers, help people assess the content they’re seeing and prevent future abuse in elections,” Facebook said. The new features and policy becomes effective on Feb 21.

The moves are part of Facebook’s attempts to reshape its public image which took a beating last year after a privacy scandal involving British data consultancy Cambridge Analytica.

Published in Dawn, February 9th, 2019