Sandberg says Facebook allows fake news ads from legit accounts If the Russian-bought election interference ads hadn’t been bought by fraudulent accounts, “Most of them would be allowed to run” Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said this morning. “The responsibility of an open platform is to allow people to express themselves” she said during the first of an Axios interview series with Facebook execs. “The thing about free expression is when you allow free expression you allow free expression” Sandberg said, noting that “we don’t check what people post” and that she doesn’t think people should want Facebook to. The linchpin quote of the interview was when Sandberg said “The question is should divisive, political, or issue ads run … our answer is yes, because when you cut off speech for one person, then you cut off speech for all people.” The perspective maintains Facebook’s neutrality across the political spectrum and absolves it from being the truth police. But it also means that it’s knowingly creating a platform where people can misinform each other. That raises the question of how free speech scales to user-generated content sharing networks that lack the curation and editorial oversight of traditional news distribution systems. Sandberg dodged Axios editor Mike Allen’s question about whether Facebook is a media company, and wasn’t pressed about how it accepts money for ads like other media companies. [...] https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/12/facebook-allows-fake-news/