Facebook chief operating officer Sherly Sandberg said Friday that Facebook will now verify the identity of anyone who wants to run political ads on the social media site, adding that this information will be archived for the public to view.
"What we're announcing today is that, if you are running not just an election ad so you're a candidate, but you're running an issue ad, and we're going to publish a list of issues, we're going to verify who you are," Sandberg told Fox News host Dana Perino. "You're going to have to tell us your location, your identity."
"If you won't tell us that or we don't think it's correct, we're not going let you run [an ad]," Sandberg continued, adding that Facebook will label all such ads as "political ads" and archive them with information on the money and individuals or groups behind each.
Facebook came under scrutiny after it was revealed that Russia bought ads on the site during the 2016 presidential campaign as part of its efforts to interfere in the election. Sandberg's announcement is part of an effort by Facebook to monitor and stop such practices, although she told Perino that the social network's size—about two billion users—makes it difficult to do so.
"Can you hire enough people to actually keep up with that?" Perino asked.
"We are ramping as quickly as possible, and you have to use technology," Sandberg responded. "But we all know that we're going to build something; someone's going to try to get around it."
Perino also asked Sandberg if Facebook knew about the Russian ads and other efforts by Moscow to influence the 2016 election as early as 2015.
"We learned about this late. We did not know then," Sandberg said.
The Facebook COO added that, since the 2016 election, Facebook has succeeded in stopping foreign troll ads in both the French presidential election and the special Senate election in Alabama in December.