The article doesn't mention this, of course, but Meta prohibits "socially sensitive" advertising due to the EU's TTPA law, or "Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising."
It imposes substantial bureaucratic compliance burden on advertising platforms to accept ads that deal with political issues.
Meta decided that the revenue wasn't worth the compliance burden, so they do not accept any political advertising at all. They filter anything that smells like political or social issues, whether it be a campaign about anti-immigration or a play about feminism, because if they accept it they will get heavily fined by the EU.
This is why Meta does not ban this advertising outside of the EU. It's a EU regulatory problem. The Register does not mention this anywhere in the article.
>Meta decided that the revenue wasn't worth the compliance burden, so they do not accept any political advertising at all
Obviously, Meta's most important revenue stream comes from scam advertisements, so all other ads are expendable.
As far as I know, political ads just must be labelled as such and there are some other small restrictions. Definitely not something that is hard for meta to implement, if they wanted to. But I admit that fines are very severe (up to 6% of annual turnover, in theory), so I see why they don't want to risk it.
mediaman · · focus · HN ↗
It imposes substantial bureaucratic compliance burden on advertising platforms to accept ads that deal with political issues.
Meta decided that the revenue wasn't worth the compliance burden, so they do not accept any political advertising at all. They filter anything that smells like political or social issues, whether it be a campaign about anti-immigration or a play about feminism, because if they accept it they will get heavily fined by the EU.
This is why Meta does not ban this advertising outside of the EU. It's a EU regulatory problem. The Register does not mention this anywhere in the article.
ishouldnotbutk8 · · focus · HN ↗
Obviously, Meta's most important revenue stream comes from scam advertisements, so all other ads are expendable.
As far as I know, political ads just must be labelled as such and there are some other small restrictions. Definitely not something that is hard for meta to implement, if they wanted to. But I admit that fines are very severe (up to 6% of annual turnover, in theory), so I see why they don't want to risk it.