Facebook employees object to the companys policy of allowing lies in political ads

Now, Facebook will clearly label false posts and state-controlled media but will continue to allow politicians to lie in their political ads on the platform.

Yesterday, Facebook employees issued an open letter urging Mark Zuckerberg and other company executives at the tech giant to rethink their strategy for regulating and green-lighting paid political ads on the platform. The open letter, obtained by The New York Times, has been signed by more than 250 employees who believe the platform is being weaponized by politicians and threatens what the company stands for allowing people to express their voice.

It doesnt protect voices, but instead allows politicians to weaponize our platform by targeting people who believe that content posted by political figures is trustworthy.

Since the Cambridge Analytica Scandal last year, where 50 million profiles had their data breached, Facebooks reputation plummeted resulting in a wave of global distrust.

Allowing paid civic misinformation to run on the platform in its current state has the potential to increase distrust in our platform by allowing similar paid and organic content to sit side-by-side some with third-party fact-checking and some without.

The letter offered the social network proposals for improvement, including: hold political ads to the same standards as other ads, restrict audience targeting for political ads, and provide a stronger visual design for political ads.

While the number of signatures on the open letter represents just a fraction of Facebooks overall 35,000-plus workforce, the action taken by the tech giants employees is a rare sign of resistance against the corporation.

Original article