Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is facing a new firestorm over the social network's handling of Russian misinformation efforts in the 2016 US election season
AFP/File / GERARD JULIEN
On Thursday, NBC News reported that Facebook has banned the Epoch Times from placing political advertisements, after the right-wing website tried to conceal its multimillion-dollar dark money streams and get around the social network's political advertising transparency rules in its propaganda supporting President Donald Trump.
The Epoch Times had tried to skirt rules by running ads under puppet names like "Honest Paper" and "Pure American Journalism," confusing users about who was really behind the ads.
In recent months, the Epoch Times has grown into one of the largest clearinghouses for pro-Trump conspiracy theories. Originally a nonprofit newspaper devoted to the anti-Communist platform of a Chinese-American religious group Falun Gong, the paper is now the largest single buyer of pro-Trump advertising after the Trump campaign itself. Last year alone, the site spent $1.5 million in 11,000 Trump ads.
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