Facebook will start labeling Russian, Chinese and other
state-controlled media organisations, and later this summer will block
any ads from such outlets that target US users, it said on Thursday.
The world's biggest social network will apply the label to Russia's Sputnik, Iran's Press TV, and China's Xinhua News, according to a partial list Facebook provided. The company will apply the label to about 200 pages at the outset.
Facebook
will not label any US-based news organisations, as it determined that
even US government-run outlets have editorial independence, Nathaniel
Gleicher, Facebook's head of cybersecurity policy, said in an interview.
Facebook,
which has acknowledged its failure to stop Russian use of its platforms
to interfere in the 2016 US presidential election, has since stepped up
its defenses and imposed greater transparency requirements for pages
and ads on its platforms.
The company announced plans last year to
create a state media label, but is introducing the tool amid a deep
crisis over its hands-off treatment of misleading and racially charged
posts by US President Donald Trump.
The new measure comes just months ahead of the November US presidential election.
Under
the measure, Facebook will not use the label for media outlets
affiliated with individual political figures or parties, which Gleicher
said could push "boundaries that are very, very slippery."
"What we want to do here is start with the most critical case," he said.
Chinese
foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters during a daily
briefing in Beijing on Friday that social media companies should not
selectively create obstacles for media agencies.
"We hope that the
relevant social media platform can put aside the ideological bias and
hold an open and accepting attitude towards each country's media role,"
he said.
Facebook is not the first company to take such action.
YouTube, owned by Alphabet's Google, in 2018 started identifying
video channels that predominantly carry news items and are funded by
governments. But critics charge YouTube has failed to label some state
news outlets, allowing them to earn ad revenue from videos with
misinformation and propaganda.
In a blog post, Facebook said its label will appear on pages globally, as well as on News Feed posts within the United States.
Facebook
also said it will ban US-targeted ads from state-controlled entities
"out of an abundance of caution" ahead of the November presidential
election. Elsewhere, the ads will receive a label.
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