A few weeks ago, Facebook made it clear that posts shared by politicians are exempt from Facebook’s community standards and also from fact-checking. The company did, however, indicate one area where posts made by politicians’ accounts could be subject to scrutiny: in paid advertising. Faced with a stark real-world test, though, Facebook appears once again to be erring on the side of letting misinformation circulate far and wide if a politician promotes it.
And other publishers like CNN won’t air the same adverts. A private individual expressing fake news can be taken down but not a political party providing fake news. That is basically called propaganda and can certainly influence voters negatively. This can certainly be exploited by devious politicians and shows the depths that Facebook is sinking to with regards to protecting its users. I can see why Facebook is gaining a more and more negative perception because it seems to have lost anymore compass that it had.
There is no perfect social network (except the one you run yourself on Hubzilla, Friendica, Mastodon, etc) but one that has been gaining a lot of followers based around interests and groups is MeWe. MeWe has a plain policy about trust, no adverts, no targeting and your data is #Not4Sale.
See https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/10/political-ads-can-lie-if-they-want-facebook-confirms/
#deletefacebook #politics #fakenews
#^Political ads can lie if they want, Facebook confirms
Last month, the company said paid speech was different. This month, not so much.