Faceboook To Use Snail Mail To Stop Foreign Nationals From Running U.S. Political Ads

Facebook is thinking of verifying identities of would-be political ad buyers by sending them snail mails in a bid to stop foreign nationals from meddling in local elections.

Facebook's global director of policy programs, Katie Harbath, told Reuters that anyone who wants to run an ad that mentions a candidate running for a federal office will need to verify if they indeed live in the U.S. This will be done by submitting a specific code sent by Facebook via a postcard, she said at a conference of the National Association of Secretaries of State over the weekend.

Executives from Twitter and Google also attended the event.

Harbath did not guarantee that the process will solve everything, but she said this was the best possible solution that Facebook could think of to prevent foreign nationals from election meddling, especially from the Russians, whom some U.S. congressmen suspected to have distributed posts and ads critical of Hillary Clinton.

It remains to be seen when exactly Facebook will start to verify through snail mail, but the company is looking to implement it before the mid-term congressional elections in November this year.

Facebook, Google, and Twitter have been continually placed in the limelight for allegedly failing to curb misinformation and fake news, especially during the U.S. presidential elections.

Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has repeatedly defended his social media platform, saying his team has ramped up efforts to remove fake contents. Lawmakers in the U.S. have called for an investigation, which included several high-ranking officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

The investigation has resulted in the indictment of 13 Russian agents for allegedly interfering in the presidential election. Robert Mueller, Special Counsel for the U.S.' Department of Justice, said the agents used identities of real Americans and their Social Security numbers to create bank and PayPal accounts in order to purchase online ads.

There have been 3,000 Russian-linked ads distributed on Facebook and Instagram that potentially reached 150 million users before and after the November 2016 U.S. elections, according to a report by the Associated Press via the New York Post.

The Russian agents also set up social media pages, Mueller said, that had names such as "Secure Borders," "Blacktivist," and "United Muslims of America," all of which had hundreds of followers.