Bipartisan bill would require 'paid for' labels on social media political ads

House Bill 1065 has bipartisan support. House Rules Chairman David Lewis, R-Harnett, is a primary sponsor, as is Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford.

Locally, Rep. Grier Martin, D-Wake, is a sponsor as well.

"It's just an updating of law that needed to be done," Lewis said Friday. "More and more people spend time on their phones. ... That's the way a lot of political communication is done now."

The disclosure would have to be in letters at least as large as the majority of the rest of the text on the ad, and with enough color contrast to be read. If passed, the bill would become law Jan. 1, too late for the November general election.

Online advertising has become more prevalent in recent years, and Facebook in particular lets political campaigns target voters with great specificity. Campaigns can show different messages to different users, paying to have different ads pop up in people's feed based on an array of demographic categories.

In 2008, campaigns spent $22 million on digital advertising, according to The Campaign Legal Center in Washington, D.C. In 2016, the figure hit $1.4 billion, more than political campaigns nationwide spent on cable television advertising, according to the center.

Initial WRAL News queries of that database show a number of political or issue ads targeting North Carolina, but the new database may not be complete. A plug-in developed by ProPublica tracks political ads on Facebook, and not all the ads captured by that program appear in Facebook's database.