Washington (AFP)

Facebook ignores the criticisms and confirms that it will only very rarely censor political advertisements, even false ones, believing that it is up to the public to sort through them, attracting a new salvo of convictions in the middle of the American presidential campaign.

"We base our principles on the fact that people can hear those who have the vocation to direct them, the good grain like the tares, and that what they have to say is sifted and debated in public", wrote Thursday in a blog post, Facebook's product manager Rob Leathern.

Thus, despite intense criticism and the risk of large-scale disinformation in the midst of the American presidential campaign, the network remains straight in its boots.

"In a democracy I think it is up to people to decide what is credible, not to tech companies," Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said in October, but with some exceptions, as if prompted to violence.

Messrs. Both Leathern and Zuckerberg insist that it is not up to a private company to make the decision to censor this or that politician. They prefer to call "a regulation which applies to the whole sector".

Facebook derives most of its revenue and huge profits from its ability to target a given audience with extreme precision, which leads US presidential candidates to spend large sums on the network, starting with the president Donald Trump.

In the fall, Facebook had allowed the dissemination of a political advertisement for its re-election campaign, which contained false information about a Democratic rival, Joe Biden.

The move sparked an uproar and another Democratic candidate, Elizabeth Warren, bought a Facebook ad where she claimed - falsely - that Mark Zuckerberg and the social network supported the re-election of Donald Trump.

On Monday, the American president said that Mark Zuckerberg had congratulated him for his presence on the famous social network at a dinner in October, which had caused the ink to flow.

- "Pay for disinformation" -

The candidates in the White House race were quick to react. Former Vice President Joe Biden taunted Facebook, which "continues to put profits before truth - allowing politicians like Donald Trump to spend unimaginable amounts of money to pay for disinformation."

For Senator Elizabeth Warren, "Facebook needs real competition and should be held accountable so that our democracy is not held hostage by their desire to make money."

"It is wrong to make money from a political campaign by spreading egregious lies to the American people," said Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar, while former congressman John Delaney called for "laws. data protection and regulatory requirements "from Washington.

Facebook is particularly on the hot seat in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election after the Cambridge Analytica scandal: this British company had used their personal data without the knowledge of tens of millions of Facebook users to influence the outcome of the vote in 2016, in favor of Donald Trump.

To this were added revelations about online disinformation campaigns carried out by a Russian pharmacy close to the Kremlin, to help the candidacy of the republican billionaire.

Facebook had been particularly slow to admit the scope of the intervention.

Twitter has decided to ban political advertising from the network. Google has adopted an intermediate position by announcing in late November a tightening of its rules on political advertising, while refusing to "rule" on their veracity except in exceptional cases.

© 2020 AFP