KOLKATA: Amid large criticism against misinformation and allegation of meddling in elections, Facebook has decided to block all new political advertising on its platform the week before the US general election in November. 

However, advertisers will be able to continue running ads they started running before the final week and adjust the targeting for those ads, but those ads will already be published transparently in Ads Library so anyone, including fact-checkers and journalists, can scrutinize them. 

Facebook will also remove posts with claims that people will get Covid2019 if they take part in voting. It will attach a link to authoritative information about the virus to posts that might use to discourage voting, and it is also not going to allow this kind of content in ads. Notably, other social media platforms such as Twitter and Pinterest, have already banned political ads on the services. 

“Given the unique circumstances of this election, it's especially important that people have accurate information about the many ways to vote safely, and that Covid2019 isn't used to scare people into not exercising their right to vote,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said.

For more than two years now, Facebook has been under constant pressure from authorities across many countries on antitrust and piracy issues. The data fiasco really got murkier when the cambridge analytica scandal came out for influencing 2016 US Presidential election. However, it had been alleged for the same outside US as well including Brexit.