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Tag: Rob Leathern

  • Facebook’s chief of advertising integrity moves on

    Facebook’s chief of advertising integrity moves on

    New Delhi: Rob Leathern, Facebook's chief of advertising integrity, who handled the company's ad products, stepped down earlier this week after serving the social media giant for over four years.

    He announced the development in one of his tweets where he also thanked his colleagues and talked about the great experience that he had at Facebook.

    Leathern has been in the tech, product, adtech space for over 15 years and was responsible for building the team at Facebook.

    Talking about his future endeavour Leathern tweeted, "What's next? While I'm not going to be working on ads directly, it will be a part of what I work on as I will be staying in the tech/data/privacy space. I will share more about where I'm going in the next week or two," without disclosing where he headed next.

    He also talked about the great work that his team did on US elections and many other projects.

  • Facebook to bring stricter ad rules ahead of India’s general election

    Facebook to bring stricter ad rules ahead of India’s general election

    MUMBAI: Reuters has reported that Facebook Inc will be extending some of its political advertising rules and tools, for curbing election interference, to several countries including India ahead of the general elections. India will be electing the parliament this summer.

    Facebook director of product management Rob Leathern has revealed that the social media site will place electoral ads in a searchable online library starting from next month. The library will resemble archives brought to the United States, Brazil, and Britain last year.

    The Indian archive will contain contact information for some ad buyers or their official regulatory certificates. For individuals buying political ads, Facebook said it would ensure their listed name matches government-issued documents.

    As the largest social media service in nearly every big country, Facebook, since 2016, has become a means for politicians and their adversaries to distribute fake news and other propaganda. Buying Facebook ads can widen the audience for such material, but some of those influence efforts may violate election rules and the company’s policies. Under pressure from authorities around the world, Facebook last year introduced several initiatives to increase oversight of political ads.

  • Cryptocurrency ads back on Facebook

    Cryptocurrency ads back on Facebook

    MUMBAI: Get ready for bitcoin ads in your Facebook feed once again. Social network platform Facebook that had banned cryptocurrency ads in January 2018 has now permitted the advertisement of cryptocurrency on newsfeed.

    At the time, Facebook announced that it will prohibit ads that promote financial products and services that are frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices, such as binary options, initial coin offerings and cryptocurrency. Facebook product management director Rob Leathern in a blogpost had said, “This policy is intentionally broad while we work to better detect deceptive and misleading advertising practices. We will revisit this policy and how we enforce it as our signals improve.”

    Now, after nearly six months since the announcement, Mark Zuckerberg led company has allowed “some ads” around the digital currency while it is working to ensure that they’re safe. Starting yesterday, the network has updated its policy to allow ads that promote cryptocurrency and related content from pre-approved advertisers.

    However, that doesn’t mean that you will see a flood of content from over 1600 cryptocurrencies in the world. Facebook wrote in a blog post that advertisers will still have to get Facebook’s consent and approval by submitting an application that includes any licences they have obtained, whether they are traded on a public stock exchange, and other relevant public background on their business. 

    Given these restrictions, not everyone who wants to advertise will be able to do so. But the social network giant is willing to listen to feedback, look at how well this policy works and continue to study this technology so that, if necessary, it can revise it over time.

    However, Facebook will continue to prohibit ads that promote binary options and initial coin offerings. Users can report content that violates the advertising policies by selecting ‘report ad’ in the upper right-hand corner of any advertisement.

    While Facebook, Google and Twitter banned cryptocurrency ads, Facebook is the first one to partially roll back.