Facebook Announces it Will Block Ads from State-controlled Media Outlets

Social media giant Facebook announced on Thursday that the platform will no longer allow state-controlled media outlets to run ads on its social networks, effective this summer.

The move is a part of the company’s efforts to prevent foreign interference in this year’s U.S. election.

“Later this summer we will begin blocking ads from these outlets in the US out of an abundance of caution to provide an extra layer of protection against various types of foreign influence in the public debate ahead of the November 2020 election in the U.S.,” Facebook wrote in a blog post.

Outlets to receive labels include Russia Today and Sputnik from Russia, and China’s CCTV and Xinhua News.

“A U.S. company long in bed with the U.S. establishment, telling the entire rest of the world what it can and cannot say, is the definition of a technological dictatorship and censorship,” a spokeswoman for Russia Today told CNBC. “Labelling foreign editorially independent news outlets as anything but is, on top of fostering prejudice and xenophobia, a prime example of the very ‘fake news’ that Facebook is supposedly trying to combat.”

Facebook also said that it would start labeling pages and posts from state-controlled media outlets. This will give users more information about who owns and runs those entities.

The company additionally said it would not moderate or take down Trump’s post because Facebook supports freedom of speech and it does not believe it should be an arbiter of truth.

Disclaimer: We have no position in Facebook, Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) and have not been compensated for this article.