Mark Zuckerberg decided to change things up at Facebook today by announcing the social network is going to be held to "an even higher standard of transparency" when it comes to political ads.

"Political advertisers will now have to provide more information to verify their identity," CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in his Facebook post. The social network is following Twitter's lead in focusing on political ads amid criticism that the Russian government may have influenced last year's US presidential election.

Last month, the company revealed that Russian-linked Facebook accounts had spent $100,000 to serve socially-divisive political ads on the platform. Russia also bought similar ads on Google and Twitter, but outdated campaign laws prevent the public from knowing the identity of the buyers, US lawmakers claim.

That's prompted a group of US senators to introduce a new bill that demands major tech companies come clean on their political ad business.

Facebook's CEO is taking things a step further. "We're making all ads more transparent, not just political ads," he said. "We'll soon start testing a feature that lets anyone visit any page on Facebook and see what ads that page is currently running," he added.

The public will also have access to a tool that can search through every political ad Facebook has ever run.

"You'll also be able to see how much an advertiser paid, the type of people who saw the ads and the number of impressions," he said. "Our goal is to fully roll this out in the US ahead of the 2018 midterm elections."

The changes sound similar to what US senators are demanding in their new bill, which would force major online services to keep a public file on all political ad purchases. The bill also demands that digital platforms include disclaimers on each political ad, identifying who sponsored them.

One of the bill's supporters, Mark Warner, a Virginia democrat, praised Facebook's announcement on Friday.

Glad to see companies taking these issues seriously. We need to work together to improve ad transparency. We need the #HonestAds Act. https://t.co/UpotNgHn6y — Mark Warner (@MarkWarner) October 27, 2017

But the worries don't end with online political ads. Warner is also concerned with how Russia allegedly used fake user accounts on US social media to spread propaganda. The social media companies "were frankly late to the game," in acknowledging these problems, Warner said last week.

Time will tell if this move by Facebook will placate US lawmakers. Next week, representatives from Facebook, Google, and Twitter are all set to testify before US congressional hearings on Russia's interference in last year's election.