New bill hopes to add restrictions to political advertisements on social media [Video]

SALT LAKE CITY —— A new bill, HB335, seeks to make changes to political advertisement restrictions. Bill sponsor Rep. Sahara Hayes, D-Salt Lake, said the bill applies specifically to political advertisements on social media.

“Paid for by” disclaimers on political advertisements

A lot of campaigns nowadays use digital marketing strategies through social media and text messages to reach more people. Hayes said that when it came to social media, some political advertisements didn’t have a “paid for by” disclaimer.

“When I was running, I noticed that there were some instances of candidates not including that ‘paid for by’ line and it [caused] a bit of confusion. So I looked into our election code and that actually isn’t stipulated. So this seems like a good time to update that code because social media marketing is becoming more and more prevalent.”

There are typically two spots where this disclaimer is placed: in the text over the screen and part of the caption. Not all political advertisements …