Facebook is rolling out a new policy that will prevent U.S. news publishers with “direct, meaningful ties” to political groups from claiming the news exemption within its political ads authorization process, executives tell Axios.
Why it matters: Since the 2016 election, reporters and researchers have uncovered over 1,200 instances in which political groups use websites disguised as local news outlets to push their point of view to Americans.
- Now, Facebook is ensuring that Pages connected to those groups are held to the same standard as political entities when it comes to advertising on the platform.
- The “news exemption” means that promoted content about social issues, elections or politics from news publishers is not labeled as political within Facebook’s political archive.
With the new policy, Pages on Facebook belonging to news outlets that are backed by political groups or people will still be allowed to register as a news Page and advertise on Facebook, but they will no longer be eligible for inclusion in the Facebook News tab, and they won’t have access to news messaging on the Messenger Business Platform or the WhatsApp business API.