Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

Facebook wants to be seen to address its perceived interference in politics. Particularly ahead of the upcoming election cycle. It wants to do this without hamstringing its ad-revenue. Let's look at what the measures are -

-an opt-out option for political ads: "The feature, which will start rolling out on Wednesday, allows users to turn off political, electoral and social issue adverts from candidates and other organisations that have the "Paid for" political disclaimer."

-encouraging voter enfranchisement: "Mr Zuckerberg went on to encourage people who aren't signed up as voters to register in time for the US election in November."

By implementing these Facebook could reasonably make the claim (i.e. at a congressional hearing) that it has consistently and passionately worked to deliver fairness on its platform and protected against manipulation. You can't design against every crisis...but you can design to say you took "reasonable measures" to prevent a crisis. I think that's exactly what these measures are aimed at doing. Someone pointed out in an earlier thread that it's the people who don't think to opt-out that are most in need of "protecting".

Good move for the users. Solves the issue of having political ads promoted on your feed and gives users the option as: If you don't like it, disable these political ads altogether.

i'd also want to turn off political wall posts.

I already have the ability to turn off facebook, and I exercised it years ago.

They would not even need to hide it, the fact that it is an optin feature already means that most people won't ever turn it off and therefore be exposed to said political messaging even when the idea is for them to not be