Facebook has reportedly banned news site The Epoch Times ads after it was found that the site was trying to avoid the company’s rules for transparency around political advertisements, according to a report from NBC News.
Back in July after journalist Judd Legum noted that many of The Epoch Times ads were in violation of Facebook’s policies, the outlet’s accounts were banned. But it simply changes the strategies, creating sock puppet pages to run the ads instead. By not disclosing that The Epoch Times was behind the new ads, the company was again in violation of Facebook’s rules, resulting in the latest ban.
A Facebook spokesperson commented to NBC News: “Over the past year we removed accounts associated with the Epoch Times for violating our ad policies, including trying to get around our review systems.We acted on additional accounts today and they are no longer able to advertise with us.”
According to an earlier NBC News report found, The Epoch Times is actually associated with Falun Gong, a Chinese religious group that seeks to tear down the Chinese government. The group apparently believes that Trump’s policies are key to that goal.
