MOSCOW (dpa-AFX) - Republican Senator John McCain has signed on to a Democrats-sponsored bill that would increase the transparency of political advertisements on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
The Bill's sponsors, Democratic Senators Amy Klobuchar and Mark Warner, say The Honest Ads Act would help prevent foreign actors from influencing US elections by ensuring that political ads sold online are covered by the same rules as ads sold on TV, radio, and satellite.
It would create federal disclosure requirements for online political ads, including who paid for them, they say.
The move by the veteran Senator, who is a known critic of President Donald Trump, marks a win for the bill's Democratic authors, who have been working for weeks to secure GOP support.
McCain is the first Republican to sign the Bill, making him a co-sponsor of a bipartisan legislation.
McCain said he backed the bill to bring transparency in election campaign finance reform, for which he had been campaigning for the last 25 years.
The proposed legislation is an offshoot of the investigations into Russia's alleged use of Facebook, Twitter and Google to influence the 2016 US presidential election.
Klobuchar, Ranking Member of the Senate Rules Committee, and Warner, Vice Chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, say Russia attempted to influence the 2016 presidential election by buying and placing political ads on social media platforms and Internet. The content and purchaser of those online advertisements are a mystery to the public because of outdated laws that have failed to keep up with evolving technology, they said in a statement.
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