Facebook To Ban Fake News Websites; Takes Steps Against Generating Advertising Revenue Using Their Site

The fight to eliminate misinformation on the internet has been going stronger as Facebook bans websites publishing hoax news stories from gaining revenues from the advertising platform. This follows what Google did to this kind of websites.

A Facebook spokesman said that fake news has been added to the list of content that was banned to tap into the Facebook Audience Network, which allows websites and mobile apps to post advertisements to visitors. In this way, Facebook will share some of the generated ad revenue that could be beneficial to the websites.

He added that their policy is already updated to explicitly clarify that fake news are not allowed to generate advertising revenue from their site. With the new policy, it falls now in the category of misleading, illegal and deceptive sites that cannot use the ad network.

The emphasis on fighting these sites was followed after Google announced  that it would prevent fake news sites from using its advertising network.

A spokesperson from Google said that these fake news sites will now be included in the list of websites banned from having an access to Google AdSense, just like putting restrictions on ad placements of sites containing pornographic and/or violent content.

These moves by tech giants has been pointed out by people as their role right now, after these misleading and hoax news were rampant during the 2016 US elections, which damaged the images of both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump during their respective campaigns.

Even president-elect Trump engaged in sharing a fake news article on his Twitter account about a crime statistics of shooting related to black people. When he's asked by Fox News about this, Trump just shrugged it off.

"@SeanSean252: @WayneDupreeShow @Rockprincess818 @CheriJacobus    https://t.co/5GUwhhtvyN"

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 22, 2015

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg believes that these fake sites would not affect the network's outcome but he also does not want to be the "arbiters of truth" despite most people are getting their news from Facebook.

This move has still no indications that it would directly affect the types of content allowed the news feed of every Facebook users.