alexsl/iStock(NEW YORK) — Snapchat unveiled an online database featuring all of its political ads, as 2020 presidential campaigns intensify and tech giants face increased scrutiny for their roles in the spread of information each election year.

The social media app company’s political ads library aims to give “the public an opportunity to find out details about all political and advocacy advertising running on our platform,” according to its website.

Snapchat said that a political ad will appear in the library — which is available as a downloadable sheet — within 24 hours of it being delivered, and provide information about who created the ad, the targeting criteria, impressions and more.

Dipayan Ghosh, a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy as well as a former privacy and public policy adviser at Facebook, told ABC News in a statement that this is a “critical development for a platform that has become increasingly important in American media.”

“Though this is a positive step forward, we must demand better political ad transparency of Snap,” he added. “Clear disclaimers identifying political content to users, real time disclosures of engagement statistics, a searchable online database, better visualizations of historical ad creatives, and granular information about ad targeting and audience segmentation are all vital given Snapchat’s increasing importance.”

Ghosh added that if tech giants and the broader internet industry “fail to offer such transparency, our democratic process will remain vulnerable to disinformation operations.”

Snapchat’s effort comes on the heels of Facebook announcing it was also tightening its rules surrounding political ads ahead of the 2020 election.

Critics, however, were quick to point out a loophole in Facebook’s efforts that smaller groups could use if they don’t have a tax ID, government website or registration with the FTC.

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