CMDS in The New York Times

The article “Facebook Finds New Disinformation Campaigns and Braces for 2020 Torrent” in The New York Times focuses on state-backed disinformation campaigns and how the social media giant tries to fight against them.

According to the article, “the revelations of the new disinformation campaigns highlight the difficulties that Facebook faces with its stance on free expression, a position that its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, emphasized last week.”

Facebook will apply labels to pages connected to state-sponsored media, to inform people whether these outlets are under government’s control. As the company wrote in a blog post: “We will hold these Pages to a higher standard of transparency because they combine the opinion-making influence of a media organization with the strategic backing of a state.”

As The New York Times writes, Facebook “said it developed its definition of state-sponsored media with input from more than 40 outside global organizations, including Reporters Without Borders, the European Journalism Center, UNESCO and the Center for Media, Data and Society."

According to Facebook, the experts consulted represent leading academic institutions, nonprofits and international organizations around the world specializing in media, governance, human rights and development.