Draft FEC Rules Target Political Ads on Social Media

The Federal Elections Commission is moving forward with a plan to introduce new rules on political advertising on social media ahead of the 2018 election cycle. The commission has a working draft of the rules in front of it now, longtime Democratic FEC Commissioner Ellen Weintraub said, though she divulged few details. 

The FEC agreed in late 2017 to come up with new rules after congressional committees hammered social media companies about how their platforms were used by Russian state agents to increase discord during the 2016 presidential election. Most lawmakers want rules that apply the same disclosure requirements that TV and radio ads have to the internet. The FEC’s draft rules focus narrowly on ads that directly advocate for a particular candidate, rather than the broader threshold some lawmakers have proposed that would require disclosure for ads about any issue of “national legislative importance.”