WASHINGTON (US) – Facebook Inc said on Friday it will start labelling newsworthy content that break the social media company’s policies, and label all posts and ads about voting with links to authoritative information, including those from politicians.
A Facebook spokeswoman confirmed the new policy would have meant attaching a link on poll information to US President Donald Trump’s post last month about mail-in ballots. Rival Twitter had affixed a fact-checking label to that post.
Facebook has drawn criticism from employees and lawmakers in recent weeks over its decisions not to act on inflammatory posts by Trump.
“There are no exceptions for politicians in any of the policies I’m announcing here today,” Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post.
Zuckerberg also said Facebook would ban ads that say people from groups based on race, religion, sexual orientation or immigration status are a threat to physical safety or health.
The policy changes comes in the wake of growing ad boycott campaign, called “Stop Hate for Profit,” that was started by several US civil rights groups following the George Floyd.
Zuckerberg’s address fell short, said Rashad Robinson, president of civil rights group Color Of Change, which is one of the groups behind the campaign.
“What we’ve seen in today’s address from Mark Zuckerberg is a failure to wrestle with the harms FB has caused on our democracy & civil rights,” Robinson tweeted. “If this is the response he’s giving to major advertisers withdrawing millions of dollars from the company, we can’t trust his leadership.”
More than 90 advertisers including Japanese carmaker Honda Motor Co Ltd’s US subsidiary, Unilever’s Ben & Jerry’s, Verizon Communications Inc and The North Face, a unit of VF Corp, have joined the campaign, according to a list by ad activism group Sleeping Giants.
Hours after Facebook’s announcement, Coca-Cola Co said starting from July 1, it would halt paid advertising on all social media platforms globally for at least 30 days.
(Photos syndicated via Reuters)
This story has been edited by BH staff and is published from a syndicated field