This New Policy from Facebook Will Help Spread More Disinformation and the Platform Is Set to Profit from It

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Facebook Offices

Facebook OfficesFacebook recently changed its policy on political ads posted on its platform that will have devasting effects regarding disinformation. In late Septemeber, it was discovered that Facebook had a feature for ads that were used to spread disinformation as advertisers can alter the displayed headline for news stories. This recent incident happened to a BBC article and Facebook said it was going to put additional safeguards in place.

The company’s policies concerning political ads prohibited false and misleading content but things are about to get worse as that policy was changed to remove that language. Facebook prohibits ads that include claims debunked by third-party fact-checkers. However, political ads are exempted from this new policy. This means they can lie even after claims in their ads have been debunked by fact-checkers.

Judd Legum who runs popular.info newsletter noticed that a Trump ad was still up even after it was fact-checked as false by PolitiFact and FactFactCheck.org, two Facebook approved third-party fact-checkers. Facebook says the ad does not violate its policies.

Profit from Disinformation

This new policy is set to give Facebook alot of profits. Trump already spends $1.5 million per week on Facebook. As the 2020 US Presidential Election heats up and other elections globally, politicians will use this policy to spread disinformation by posting ads with false information and Facebook wouldn’t do a thing about it as it doesn’t violate its policies.

Dark days are coming

While speaking about the social media giant efforts to fight interference and misinformation in advance of the 2020 election, Nick Clegg, Facebook’s VP of Global Affairs and Communications said that Facebook will not send organic content or ads from politicians to their third-party fact-checking partners for review.

This is worrying as in a leaked audio recording, Mark Zuckerberg said that he will fight Elizabeth Warren if she wins the 2020 Elections. The Democratic Presidential hopeful has been vocal saying that big tech companies should be broken up.

Elizabeth responded on Twitter saying:

Tech pundits are already worried

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