The company should clearly disclose and regularly publish data about the volume and nature of actions taken to restrict advertising content that violates the company’s advertising content policies and advertising targeting policies.
Elements
- Does the company publish the total number of advertisements it restricted to enforce its advertising content policies?
- Does the company publish the number of advertisements it restricted based on which advertising content rule was violated?
- Does the company publish the total number of advertisements it restricted to enforce its advertising targeting policies?
- Does the company publish the number of advertisements it restricted based on which advertising targeting rule was violated?
- Does the company publish this data at least once a year?
- Can the data be exported as a structured data file?
Definitions:
Advertisement — A message that an advertiser has paid a company to display to a subset of its users, consisting of both advertising content and targeting parameters.
Advertising content — Any content that someone has paid a company to display to its users.
Advertising content policies — Documents that outline a company’s rules governing what advertising content are permitted on the platform.
Advertising targeting policies — Documents that outline a company’s rules governing what advertising targeting parameters are permitted on the platform.
Clearly disclose(s) — The company presents or explains its policies or practices in its public-facing materials in a way that is easy for users to find and understand.
Content restriction — An action the company takes that renders an instance of user-generated content invisible or less visible on the platform or service. This action could involve removing the content entirely or take a less absolute form, such as as hiding it from only certain users (eg inhabitants of some country or people under a certain age), limiting users’ ability to interact with it (eg making it impossible to “like”), adding counterspeech to it (eg corrective information on anti-vaccine posts), or reducing the amount of amplification provided by the platform’s curation systems.
Structured data — “Data that resides in fixed fields within a record or file. Relational databases and spreadsheets are examples of structured data. Although data in XML files are not fixed in location like traditional database records, they are nevertheless structured, because the data are tagged and can be accurately identified.” Conversely, unstructured data is data that “does not reside in fixed locations. The term generally refers to free-form text, which is ubiquitous. Examples are word processing documents, PDF files, e-mail messages, blogs, Web pages and social sites.” Sources: PCMag Encyclopedia: “structured data” http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/52162/structured-data
“unstructured data” http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/53486/unstructured-data
Indicator guidance: Indicators F3c and F3d ask companies to clearly disclose rules for what types of ad content and ad targeting is prohibited, respectively, and to describe its processes for enforcing these rules. This indicator, F4c, asks companies to publish evidence that it is enforcing these rules. Companies should publish data on the total number of ads it removes as a result of breaches to ad content policies, and they should also break out this data by what rule was violated. Companies should also provide evidence that it is enforcing its ad targeting policies by publishing data on the number of ads removed for violating targeting rules, and by what rule was violated. Companies should also publish this data at least once a year and in a structured data file.
Potential sources:
- Company transparency report
- Company community standards enforcement report
- Company advertiser portal, ad policy, political ad policy
- Company support, help center, or advertiser FAQ
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