Twitter to open transparency centre, label political ads

 San Francisco, Oct 25: In a bid to increase transparency on its platform, Twitter has announced to publicly disclose all ads — including political and issue-based ads — and the identity of who bought them. In the wake of Russia’s alleged use of social media platforms to interfere with the 2016 US presidential election, two Democratic setors introduced last week the “Honest Ads Act”, a bill which requires tech companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter to disclose political ads purchased on their platforms. “In the coming weeks, we will launch an industry-leading transparency centre that will offer everyone visibility into who is advertising on Twitter, details behind those ads, and tools to share your feedback with us,” Twitter posted late on Tuesday. The transparency centre will show all ads that are currently running on Twitter, including “Promoted-Only” ads, how long ads have been running and ads targeted to you as well as persolised information on which ads you are eligible to receive based on targeting. People can also report ippropriate ads or give negative feedback for every ad running on Twitter, whether the ad targets them or not. (IANS)