Facebook does not fact-check political ads.
Resolved true The record shows it happened or was so.
Factual: Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?
The second judge said mostly true; the verdict shown is the first judge's.
Said for an organisation they lead or work for; it counts on both records.
What would count as true or false
Judge as of 2019-10-17. True: Facebook's policy at that time exempted ads from politicians (political candidates) from third-party fact-checking, as stated in its official policy pages and newsroom posts. Mostly true: the exemption applied to ads from politicians but not to all political or issue ads from other advertisers, so 'political ads' slightly overstates its scope. Mixed: the exemption covered only a narrow part of political ads. Mostly false: most political ads were fact-checked and only a small exception applied. False: Facebook fact-checked political ads at that time.
Set before the research began.
Evidence (4)
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E1 In phony Facebook ad, Warren said most TV networks will refuse ads with a ‘lie’ but that’s wrong – PolitiFact PolitiFact · 15 October 2019
“But Facebook exempts politicians from the fact-checking program, stating that it won’t “referee political debates” or block a politician’s speech from an audience.”
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E2 In phony Facebook ad, Warren said most TV networks will refuse ads with a ‘lie’ but that’s wrong – PolitiFact PolitiFact · 15 October 2019
“While Facebook drew attention for an announcement in September about exempting political candidates, that had already been Facebook’s policy since 2017.”
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E3 Facebook will not fact-check politicians BBC News · 25 September 2019
“The company said politicians would be exempt from its fact-checking scheme which is designed to reduce the spread of fake news and misinformation.”
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E4 Facebook's Zuckerberg grilled over ad fact-checking policy BBC News · 23 October 2019
“US lawmakers have sharply criticised Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg about the firm's policy not to fact check political ads.”
Reasoning
BBC News reported on 2019-09-25 that Facebook said politicians would be exempt from its fact-checking scheme (E3). PolitiFact confirmed on 2019-10-15 that Facebook exempts politicians from its fact-checking program, and said this had been its policy since 2017 (E1, E2). A BBC report from 2019-10-23 also described the policy as not fact-checking political ads (E4). Together these show the exemption for politicians' ads was in place on 2019-10-17, which meets the criteria for true. The evidence does not show whether political ads from advertisers who are not politicians were treated differently, so it gives no basis for the narrower "mostly true" verdict.
Cite this claim
Mark Zuckerberg, “Facebook does not fact-check political ads.” (said 17 October 2019). Verdict: resolved true. Reliability API, claim c_6ddd4bbd2bee, method 0.1.0+3f84d14d, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_6ddd4bbd2bee
This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.
Reply to this claim
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Verdicts are made automatically; how verdicts are made.