Those who use Facebook should view the political ads they see on the social media platform with a healthy dose of skepticism. CNN reported that Facebook will not fact-check political ads.

That means individual people will need to do their own research on whatever content those type of ads contain. Sadly, I don’t think that most people will bother to do their own fact-checking, especially for political ads that spread misinformation that matches the person’s political leanings.

Facebook released its decision to not fact-check political speech in September of 2019. Facebook stated that it does not believe it is appropriate for them “to referee political debates and prevent a politician’s speech from reaching its audience and being subject to public scrutiny.”

That’s why Facebook exempts politicians from our third-party fact-checking program. We have had this policy on the books for over a year now, posted publicly on our site under eligibility guidelines. This means we will not send organic content or ads from politicians to our third-party fact-checking partners for review. However, when a politician shares previously debunked content including links, videos and photos, we plan to demote that content, display related information from fact-checkers, and reject its inclusion in advertisements.

That said, Facebook doesn’t appear to be adhering to the part about demoting ads that contain previously debunked content. The New York Times reported in October 2019 that a 30-second ad released by the Trump campaign provided misinformation about Joe Biden, and the impeachment inquiry into President Trump.

According to The New York Times, the Biden campaign asked Facebook to take down that ad. Facebook responded to the Biden campaign by saying the ad had been viewed five million times on the site, and declaring that the ad did not violate company policies.

Facebook’s decision to opt-out of fact-checking political ads extends to the UK. According to CNN, Facebook will not fact-check ads run by British political parties or the thousands of candidates running for election to the House of Commons. This comes as the UK is preparing for a historic December election regarding Brexit.

Facebook announced that it is starting to test Facebook News, which is described as “a dedicated place for news on Facebook”, to a subset of people in the United States. The initial test showcases local original reporting from the largest major metro areas of the country, beginning with New York, Los Angeles, Dallas-Fort Worth, Philadelphia, Houston, Washington D.C., Miami, Atlanta, and Boston.

How does Facebook decide which publishers to include? The announcement provides an explanation.

They need to be in our News Page Index, which we developed in collaboration with the industry to identify news content. They also need to abide by Facebook’s Publisher Guidelines, these include a range of integrity signals in determining product eligibility, including misinformation – as identified based on third-party fact checkers – community standards violations (e.g. hate speech), clickbait, engagement bait, and others…. Lastly, they must serve a sufficiently large audience, with different thresholds for the four categories of publishers.

Facebook says it talked to news organizations about what they’d like to see included in a news tab, how their stories should be presented, and what analytics to provide. Facebook also talked to people and publishers, and identified key features to make Facebook news valuable.

Those key features are:

Today’s Stories – chosen by a team of journalists to catch you up on the news throughout the day.

Personalization – based on the news you read, share and follow, so you can find new interests and topics and Facebook News is fresh and interesting every time you open it.

Topic sections – to dive deeper into business, entertainment, health, science & tech, and sports.

Your Subscriptions – a section for people who have linked their paid news subscriptions to their Facebook account.

Controls – to hide articles, topics, and publishers you don’t want to see.

I find the part called “Your Subscriptions” interesting. I don’t use Facebook, so it never occurred to me that some people are buying a subscription to their favorite news sites and connecting it to their Facebook account. I cannot help but wonder how that affects the news site if people choose to start accessing it only through Facebook.

Facebook announced that they removed four separate networks of accounts, Pages and Groups for engaging in inauthentic behavior on Facebook and Instagram. According to Facebook, three of those networks of accounts originated in Iran, and one originated in Russia.

Facebook stated that all of these operations created networks of accounts to mislead others about who they were and what they were doing. Facebook has shared its findings with law enforcement, policymakers, and industry partners. In addition, Facebook shared some samples of content that had been posted by some of those Pages. Those who are interested can view it on the Facebook Newsroom announcement.

We’re constantly working to detect and stop this type of activity because we don’t want our services to be used to manipulate people. We’re taking down these Pages, Groups, and accounts based on their behavior, not the content they posted. In each of these cases, the people behind this activity coordinated with one another and used fake accounts to misrepresent themselves, and that was the basis for our action.

Here are some details about what Facebook found so far:

• They removed 93 Facebook accounts, 17 Pages, and four Instagram accounts for violating Facebook’s policy against coordinated inauthentic behavior. Facebook states that this activity originated in Iran and focused primarily on the United States, and some on French-speaking audiences in North Africa.
• The individuals behind this activity used compromised and fake accounts – some of which had already been disabled by Facebook’s automated systems. Those accounts were used to masquerade as locals, manages Pages, join Groups, and to drive people to off-platform domains connected to Facebook’s previous investigation into the Iran-linked “Liberty Front Press”.
• The Page admins and account owners typically posted about local political news and geopolitics including topics like public figures in the US, politics in the US and Israel, support of Palestine and conflict in Yemen.
• About 7,700 accounts followed one or more of these Pages, and around 145 people followed one or more of these Instagram accounts.

While it is good that Facebook is making an effort to remove fake accounts and inauthentic behavior, it isn’t enough. This keeps happening. Those who use Facebook or Instagram need to be smarter about what accounts they follow, Groups they join, or Pages they interact with. Never follow an off-site link to a website that you haven’t heard of. It could be leading you to “fake news” designed to make you feel outrage.

BuzzFeed News reported that officials from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia are set to publish an open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The officials do not want Facebook to enact end-to-end encryption across its messaging services. The text of the open letter is in the BuzzFeed News article.

The letter is signed by U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, acting U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan, UK Home Secretary Priti Patel, and Australian Minister for Home Affairs Peter Dutton. The letter, as BuzzFeed News puts it, “raises concerns that Facebook’s plan to build end-to-end encryption into its messaging apps will prevent law enforcement agencies from finding illegal activity conducted through Facebook, including child sexual exploitation, terrorism, and election meddling.”

The officials want Facebook to “prioritize public safety” in designing its encryption by enabling law enforcement to gain access to illegal content in a manageable format and by consulting with local governments ahead of time to ensure the changes will allow this access.

In short, Facebook is being pressured to allow law enforcement to spy on the messages sent and received by users of Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram. Much of the wording of the letter indicates that the purpose of this is to enable law enforcement to catch people who are grooming or trafficking children. But, the letter doesn’t say anything about the limitations that various governments would have regarding what they can snoop on. Nothing is said about requiring a warrant before accessing the information.

Personally, I find this sketchy. If Facebook decides to succumb to the bidding of these world leaders, they will be opening a Pandora’s Box that they will not be able to reverse. Once a big social media site allows law enforcement to indiscriminately spy on users – there is nothing that will stop it from happening.