Facebook stepped up its effort to pull back the curtain on political advertisers. The move is an effort to combat fake accounts and the kind of manipulation that the Russians pulled off during the 2016 presidential election.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted, “. . . from now on, every advertiser who wants to run political or issue ads will need to be verified. To get verified, advertisers will need to confirm their identity and location. Any advertiser who doesn’t pass will be prohibited from running political or issue ads. We will also label them and advertisers will have to show you who paid for them. We’re starting this in the US and expanding to the rest of the world in the coming months.”

Zuckerberg said that earlier this week, Facebook took down “a large network of Russian fake accounts that included a Russian news organization.” Facebook previously removed tens of thousands fake accounts in the run-up to the French and German elections and Alabama Senate special election. 

Facebook also will require people who run pages with large followings to verify they are who they say they are. It plans to hire thousands more people to get the new systems in place before the 2018 elections. 

Zuckerberg said he thinks the problem of fake accounts and political interference is bigger than any one platform. He said he supports a bill pending in Congress called The Honest Ads Act, sponsored by senators Amy Klobuchar (D), Mark Warner (D) and John McCain (R). It would require regulation of online political ads similar to the kind of regulation that covers TV and radio.

In a statement from its media department, Facebook said, “We know we were slow to pick up on interference in the 2016 elections. Today’s updates are designed to prevent future abuse in elections.”

Facebook began to make changes after it was revealed that a political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, harvested profiling data of 87 million Facebook users.

Zuckerberg is scheduled to testify before Congress next week.