Facebook to place state media labels on Russian, Chinese outlets

Facebook Inc is set to start labelling Russian, Chinese and other state-controlled media organisations. It also plans to block any ads from such outlets that target US users later this summer.

The new measure comes just months ahead of the November US presidential election.

The world's biggest social network will apply the label to Russia's Sputnik, Iran's Press TV and China's Xinhua News, according to a partial list Facebook provided. The company will apply the label to about 200 pages at the outset.

The company announced plans last year to create a state media label, but is introducing the tool amid a deep crisis over its hands-off treatment of racially charged posts by US President Donald Trump.

Facebook will not label any US-based news organisations, as it determined that the government-run outlets have editorial independence.

Facebook, which has acknowledged its failure to stop Russian use of its platforms to interfere in the 2016 US presidential election, has since stepped up its defences and imposed greater transparency requirements for pages and ads on its platforms.

Under the measure, Facebook will not use the label for media outlets affiliated with individual political figures or parties.

In a blog post, Facebook said its label will appear on pages globally, as well as on News Feed posts within the United States.

Facebook also said it will ban US-targetted ads from state-controlled entities "out of an abundance of caution" ahead of the November presidential election. Elsewhere, the ads will receive a label.

Facebook is not the first company to take such action.

YouTube, owned by Alphabet Inc's Google, in 2018 started identifying video channels that predominantly carry news items and are funded by governments. But critics charge YouTube has failed to label some state news outlets, allowing them to earn ad revenue from videos with misinformation and propaganda.