Facebook may soften political ad rules for EU election

Facebook’s latest attempt to crack down on election interference just hit a major obstacle.

The social network might be willing to exempt some European political parties from its rules about political advertising, the Financial Times reports. The concession came in a letter from Facebook’s head of global affairs Nick Clegg to European Parliament president Antonio Tajani.

Ahead of next month’s European Parliament elections, Facebook instituted a new policy requiring political ad buyers to register in each individual country where they want their ads to be shown. This was a problem, considering there are 28 member states in the EU.

More specifically, Clegg apparently told Tajani that 19 different parties and organizations could be exempted from the rules for a month before May 26. 

Facebook has engaged in several high-profile campaigns to show that it’s really dedicated to fighting election interference after the 2016 United States presidential election. Similar rules barring foreign advertisers from buying political ads were put in place in the U.S. and U.K. 

Earlier this month, Facebook rolled out anti-interference rules in Australia, as well. 

However, the EU is a different beast, with the populations of 28 different autonomous countries voting for new parliament members. Facebook’s rules were potentially antithetical to Europe’s democratic model, making it expensive for parties to run ads across different nations.

Facebook’s possible exemptions may not please everyone. Clegg’s letter reportedly said individual candidates would still need to abide by the rules, which could only be lifted for larger organizations. Smaller parties may also have to spend extra cash to run their ads, according to the Times.

Mark Zuckerberg’s massive social network can’t please everybody, but in this instance, it doesn’t seem like it pleased many people at all.