Facebook’s secret weapon in the fight against foreign meddling? Postcards

Enlarge / Mock-up of expected returns from Facebook's postcard campaign. (credit: Alexey Nikolsky / AFP / Getty Images / Aurich Lawson)

A Facebook executive has announced a new plan designed to mitigate foreign influence in political ad buys on the social media platform. It involves a technology your grandparents would recognize-postcards.

The plan was announced one day after Special Counsel Robert Mueller unveiled indictments against 13 Russians who used Facebook, among other American social media sites, to attempt to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.

The idea, according to Katie Harbath, Facebook's global director of policy programs, is that if an ad mentions a specific candidate, Facebook will mail a verification postcard containing a code to the advertiser's American address to confirm that the ad buyer is Stateside. Then, the buyer would need to provide that code on Facebook's ad platform for the ad to be published.

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