Facebook again refuses to ban political ads, even false ones

SAN FRANCISCO — Despite escalating pressure ahead of the 2020 presidential election, Facebook reaffirmed its freewheeling policy on political ads Thursday, saying it won’t ban them, won’t fact-check them and won’t limit how they can be targeted to specific groups of people. Instead, Facebook said it will offer users slightly more control over how many political ads they see and make its online library of political ads easier to browse. These steps appear unlikely to assuage critics — including politicians, activists, tech competitors and some of the company’s own rank-and-file employees — who say that Facebook has too much power and that social media is warping democracy and...