Facebook Will Start Adding Labels To State-Controlled Post Under Its New Policy
Facebook soon will begin labeling ads from “state-controlled’ publishers later this year. They will start adding labels to news outlets that are controlled by governments. This will help them mark the information that is at least worth considering if not necessarily unreliable.
Furthermore, the company will also be banned from buying ads if they are labeled starting this summer.
A few months, the company announced its plan to do this as one part of its election integrity efforts. They did this along with requiring confirmation from the owners for their pages and banning anti-voting ads.
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According to company’s new policy, organizations that are possibly under the influence of a government will have a clear label. Additionally, their post will also have a label. This label will contain a warning that will read “This publisher is wholly or partially under the editorial control of a state. This is determined by a range of factors, including but not limited to funding, structure and journalistic standards.”
The new policy should roll out to all users over the next week. In order to analyze and classify the many news organizations, Facebook has turned to experts. The experts have advised that there are be multiple factors that should be considered before any action.
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The “state-controlled” label will be only applied to on ownership structure and stakeholders, official statements, policies and oversight, editorial leadership and guidelines, and the state of freedom of media in the respective country. The publisher or outlets can send in an appeal to the company is they think there has been an error.
Furthermore, it is also important to note that the label will not be applied to news, posts, and organizations that are only referring to state-controlled media. The information that is published by pages that are labeled will not be subjected to special fact-check or scrutiny.
The ads will not be blocked outside of the U.S. but they will be labeled.