Facebook says to extend political ad changes to UK

Facebook today said that it would be extending a raft of measures to allow its users to identify the source of political adverts that appear in their feed to Britain next year.

The US social media giant's Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer appeared before a British parliamentary committee probing the role of fake news in recent votes, and how data gathered from the network was used to target potential voters.

Schroepfer admitted that Facebook had been "slow" in realising how its data was being used following revelations that British communications firm Cambridge Analytica mined information on around 90 million users.

"We didn't understand the threat," he said.

"I can't fix that back then, but I can devote my time and energy to two things: one is, with the specific acts, we build every defence we can, and then two, we do a deeper more rigorous forward looking... proactive defence."