Twitter adds new policies for ads to protect EU elections in May

Feb. 19 (UPI) -- Twitter announced Tuesday it'll make tools available in the European Union for transparency on who pays for political ads on its platform and how they're promoted.

Twitter said its effort is aimed at adding another layer of security online in the lead-up to EU elections in May. It's an expansion of rules that debuted in the United States last year ahead of the midterm elections.

Twitter said beginning March 11, campaigns will have to earn certification and have an EU-registered address to run ads. The social media company said it will introduce the same policy in Australia and India, as well.

"We launched our Political Campaigning Policy in the United States to provide clear insight into how we define political content and who is advertising political content on Twitter," the company wrote in a blog post Tuesday.

"In conjunction, we launched the Ads Transparency Center. The ATC allows anyone across the globe to view ads that have been served on Twitter, with even more details on political campaigning ads, including ad spend and targeting demographics."

The EU elections run from Mary 23 through May 26.

British researchers found in 2017 a network of more than 13,500 suspected bots published Twitter posts that primarily supported pro-Brexit messages before it was deleted after the 2016 referendum passed.

"The purpose of these bots was to swell artificial levels of public support for different sides of the vote by tweeting or retweeting both human users and other fake accounts," researcher Dan Mercea said.

In December, the U.S. Senate released two reports that said Russian operatives used social media on behalf of President Donald Trump during the 2016 election by discouraging African-American and Latino voters.