Maybe I’m misunderstanding this, but the issue seems to be:
“To avoid criminal liability, online platforms would be required to obtain and assess documentation to verify the buyers and determine if the advert in question constitutes an advertisement prior to posting it.
According to the commission, this poses an onerous duty on online platforms to systematically monitor the publication of political advertising.”
So the issue is platforms hosting political ads would be required to confirm that’s what they’re hosting and for whom and that’s an undue burden – it’s hardly a shady tactic – if anything, given what we’ve seen in terms of foreign influence of elections/referendums as we’ve seen with Russia in Brexit/US elections, it’s an attempt to prevent that type of influence.
However, the mechanisms don’t exist for policing and it’s arguably unfair on Web advertisers to own such a liability.
1 comment
Maybe I’m misunderstanding this, but the issue seems to be:
“To avoid criminal liability, online platforms would be required to obtain and assess documentation to verify the buyers and determine if the advert in question constitutes an advertisement prior to posting it.
According to the commission, this poses an onerous duty on online platforms to systematically monitor the publication of political advertising.”
So the issue is platforms hosting political ads would be required to confirm that’s what they’re hosting and for whom and that’s an undue burden – it’s hardly a shady tactic – if anything, given what we’ve seen in terms of foreign influence of elections/referendums as we’ve seen with Russia in Brexit/US elections, it’s an attempt to prevent that type of influence.
However, the mechanisms don’t exist for policing and it’s arguably unfair on Web advertisers to own such a liability.