Facebook starts labeling posts and pages of state-owned media outlets.

On Thursday, Facebook announced that state-owned and controlled media outlets will be labelled by it, so as to provide greater transparency to the users. Users will be warned if a certain media outlet is state-controlled or not, and their posts will be labelled with immediate effect. Example: - Russia Today and China’s Xinhua, on whose Facebook pages and posts, labels will appear.

Greater transparency for users who get wrongly influenced:
Nathan Gleicher, head of cyber-security policy at Facebook, on his blog wrote,” We’re providing greater transparency into these publishers because they combine the influence of a media organization with the strategic back of a state. We strongly believe that people should know if the news they read is coming from a publication that may be under the influence of a government.” Facebook in October 2019 had said that it would be rolling out these labels so as to give its users greater transparency. The motive behind labelling such posts and pages is to educate the users on which country is running the media outlet so that the users don’t get influenced wrongfully.

To curb influence from Russia and China, Facebook to block accounts from running ads:
The Mark Zuckerberg owned Facebook, wishes to prevent China and Russia’s influence in the upcoming 2020 US elections and has also laid out plans to block state-controlled media outlets to run ads on their platform. Facebook faced a backlash from its employees and followers on their handling of recent posts of US President Donald Trump following the killing of a black man, George Floyd due to police brutality. Many employees voiced their disagreements and some even quit after the company refused to moderate a post of President Trump’s.