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Updated November 1st, 2019 at 03:17 IST

San Francisco: Man runs for governor position to fight FB's ad policy

A man from San Francisco is running for the governor only to fight against the fake ads run by politicians on Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook and its policies

Reported by: Aanchal Nigam
San Francisco
| Image:self
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A man from San Francisco is running for the governor post only to fight against the fake ads run by politicians on Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook and its controversial policy. Adriel Hampton registered to be the candidate of California's gubernatorial elections of 2022 on October 28 to not necessarily win the polls but to run his own Facebook ads about President Trump, Facebook CEO, and other executives of Facebook as well as Twitter.

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Unchecked ads on Facebook

Facebook allows political candidates to run their ads for monetary benefits without checking its facts. This policy has previously also drawn criticism from the Democrats who also believe that Facebook's policy on ads will again benefit President of United States, Donald Trump in the Presidential elections of 2020 like it apparently did in 2016. The former Vice President of the US, Joe Biden has also written to the social media giant for the removal of a false ad run by Donald Trump campaign about Biden and Ukraine, however, Facebook denied his request. 

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A political activist – Adriel Hampton

Hampton is a political activist himself and reportedly runs a marketing firm in San Francisco. He registered at the local post office on Monday with a goal to force Facebook to prohibit politicians from running fake ads and not to be the governor. Reportedly, on the same day, hundreds of Facebook employees had written to Zuckerberg also to call out the policy to which the Facebook spokesperson said that the encourage the company's members to voice their opinions on the topic. The person further said that the company will remain committed to not censoring political speech and will explore additional steps. Hampton thus hopes that Facebook will allow him to run false ads without the company stopping him. 

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Zuckerberg defends 'free speech'

Facebook says it won't remove 'newsworthy' content that goes against its community standards. Zuckerberg has defended Facebook's refusal to take down content it considers newsworthy “even if it goes against our standards”. Technology companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter are all reportedly trying to be in charge of internet content but at the same time, they are also avoiding infringing on the First Amendment rights. This has swung recently toward restricting hateful speech that could spawn violence. The shift follows mass shootings in which the suspects have posted racist screeds online or otherwise expressed hateful views or streamed images of attacks. However, Zuckerberg has also compared the social media's capability to start a dialogue with the 'fourth estate' which is referred to as the media.

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(With inputs from agencies)

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Published November 1st, 2019 at 03:16 IST

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