Facebook to give Russian ads to Congress, boost transparency

San Francisco : Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday Russia-linked ads on the huge social network aimed at inflaming tensions around last year's US presidential election will be given to Congress.

News of the decision came with word that Facebook is cracking down on efforts to use the leading social network to meddle with elections in the US or elsewhere.

"It is a new challenge for internet communities to have to deal with nation states attempting to subvert elections," Zuckerberg said in a live video presentation streamed on his Facebook page.

"But, we are committed to rising to the occasion."

Zuckerberg announced a series of steps that would help prevent the manipulation of the social network including more transparency on political ads appearing on Facebook.

The huge social network enables any advertiser, including political operatives, to target specific groups of Facebook users based on demographics, hobbies, age or other characteristics shared at the social network.

Some analysts have argued that so-called "dark ads," the contents of which are not available to the public, could have inflamed tensions and potentially impacted the 2016 election.

Zuckerberg said the new steps would address these concerns.

"We're going to bring Facebook to an even higher standard of transparency," he said.

"Not only will you have to disclose which page paid for an ad, but we will also make it so you can visit an advertiser's page and see the ads they're currently running to any audience on Facebook."

Facebook earlier this month agreed to hand over information about the ads from Russian entity known as the Internet Research Agency to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of the 2016 election and on Thursday decided to turn over the information to congressional investigators.

"We believe it is vitally important that government authorities have the information they need to deliver to the public a full assessment of what happened in the 2016 election," Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch said in a blog post.