"Facebook's Community Standard"

Some of the Facebook ads linked to a Russian effort to disrupt the 2016 presidential election. Credit:Jon Elswick/Associated Press

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Facebook is one of the largest and most successful outlets for businesses, politicians and anyone who has access to the social media site to spread their personal beliefs. As Twitter's chief executive recently announced they will no longer host any political advertisements, I breathed a sigh of relief. Personally, I do not agree with any social media platforms being used to advertise the world's political and economic culture, especially, without verifying the information. Although it is not a new phenomenon, false news is disrupting and harming our community on many levels and is often financially motivated. Facebook has recently decided to not require ads bought by political candidates to be fact-checked for accuracy. Zuckerberg has defended the policy, stating that Facebook doesn’t agree with interfering in free speech across any of its platforms and will continue to distribute political ads without confirming accuracy of the information. Although Facebook claims to stand for free speech, they have censored content for governments such as, Pakistan, India and Turkey. Although these countries have speech restrictions the website has the technology to downgrade or delete content and accounts to abide by foreign policies. As technological advancements are being made daily, why isn’t Facebook capable of filtering political ads?

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