FACEBOOK BANS POLITICAL ADS SEVEN DAYS BEFORE US ELECTIONS

Facebook has revised its policies relating to political ads during the week in the lead up to the US elections in November.

In a post on the social media platform's official website, founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, said the company is taking additional steps to encourage voting, connect people with authoritative information, and fight misinformation.

"These changes reflect what we've learned from our elections' work over the past four years, and the conversations we've had with voting rights experts and our civil rights auditors."

A decision that has left Republican party leader and president, Donald Trump, as well as the Democrats fuming, will not allow any new ads to be published on Facebook during the seven days leading up to the general election on the 3rd of November.

While ads that have been published before the deadline will still be allowed to run, new ads won't be allowed to be published.

"Advertisers will be able to continue running ads they started running before the final week and adjust the targeting for those ads, but those ads will already be published transparently in our Ads Library so anyone, including fact-checkers and journalists, can scrutinise them."

Zuckerberg said his decision is based on his concern for the current civil unrest in the United States, and that his company acknowledges that this election won't be "business as usual" due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Trump campaign's deputy national press secretary, Samantha Zager, isn't happy about the decision made by the Silicon Valley-based company.

"In the last seven days of the most important election in our history, President Trump will be banned from defending himself on the largest platform in America. When millions of voters will be making their decision, the President will be silenced by the Silicon Valley Mafia."

The 2020 US general elections will see Trump going up against Joe Biden in the run for the presidential seat in the White House.

Watch the Fox Business video below for their view on the Facebook political ad ban.

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