Facebook only allows authorised persons of a political party to place advertisements on its platform, said Roy Tan, the head of politics and government outreach of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp during the recent “Ready to Run” Campaign Training for Women Election Candidates held in Suva.
Mr Tan added the person placing the election advertisement must state who is paying for the advertisement.
“You will need to first of all get yourself authorised so you need to be based in Fiji, you need to show an identification card that you’re based there,” he said.
“You are allowed to place ads by creating a disclaimer so you need to create a disclaimer stating who paid for the ad, like paid for by xxx, paid for by xxx organization.”
“Your ad goes out to the public it will say you know all sponsors or ads have a sponsor. It will say sponsored and paid for by xxx and so it’s very clear about who’s paying for that. Its very transparent and it goes to what we call an ad library for an archive for a period of seven years what happens it’s totally transparent to everyone. You can see what pages or what other pages are posting what kind of political or electoral ads and you’ll be able to see whose paying for it.”
Mr Tan said Facebook took at least four days to approve an application by an authorised person to place advertisements on its platforms.
