A coalition of European academics, technologists and human and digital rights groups, led by Mozilla,  has signed an open letter to the company demanding far greater transparency about how Facebook’s platform distributes and amplifies political ads ahead of elections to the European parliament which will take place in May...

In a statement responding to the open letter, attributed to Rob Leathern, its director of product management, Facebook said:

We’re committed to a new level of transparency to ads on Facebook and encourage others to do the same. That’s why we’re planning to open the Ad API in late March — at the same time as our already-announced program to label political ads ahead of the European Parliament election — so people on and off Facebook can analyze political ads and see them archived in a library for up to seven years. This work is important and part of our broader efforts to protect elections this year. We’re also bringing transparency tools for political ads to India, Israel, Ukraine, and globally in June.