Facebook reveals high-tech plans to prevent Russian companies from buying election ads using postcards

Nearly 16 months on from the US presidential election in 2016, Facebook is still grappling with the consequences of Russian companies buying election adverts on the platform.

The Mark Zuckerberg-owned company believes Russian Facebook ads reached 29m Americans directly, and 126m people indirectly during the election period.

As a result, it is trying out a series of measures to prevent foreign companies buying election ads.

Facebook's latest measure? Postcard verification.

According to the company's global director of policy programmes, Katie Harbath, the social network is going to send postcards using US mail later this year to verify the identities and locations of people who want to purchase US election-related ads.

The postcards will contain a specific code and will be sent to people attempting to buy advertising that mentions a specific candidate running for federal office in the US.

Harbath explained how it will work, saying: “If you run an ad mentioning a candidate, we are going to mail you a postcard and you will have to use that code to prove you are in the United States.”

Whilst she admitted the postcard won’t solve everything, Harbath says the new process was the “most-effective method” Facebook could come up with to prevent bad actors from purchasing advertising while posing as someone else.

The new system is likely to come into use before the mid-term congressional elections in November.

Facebook under pressure to show strength in the face of Russian Facebook ads

The new measures were revealed just a few days after the US special counsel Robert Mueller indicted 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities for alleged illegal election interference.

The indictment concerns the work of a Russian organisation, named the Internet Research Agency. The agency is accused of “spread[ing] distrust towards the candidates and the political system in general.” The defendants used social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter, to advance their scheme.

In the UK, the Electoral Commission is investigating whether Russian actors used social media to influence the Brexit vote in 2016.

In the past, the social media giant said only 73p was spent on Russian Facebook ads relating to Brexit. However, it was recently forced to backtrack on this.

In January, the company agreed to reopen its investigation regarding Russian influence during the referendum. In a letter to Damian Collins, chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, Facebook’s head of policy in the UK, Simon Milner, said its team will now search for “clusters engaged in coordinated activity around the Brexit referendum” which appear to have originated in Russia.

Milner said it will take a number of weeks to complete the investigation, due to the complexity of the task.