Beijing (AFP)
China accused Facebook on Friday of having "ideological prejudices" after the social network announced new rules targeting state media, especially Chinese, which will now be clearly identified on the site.
The American platform had presented Thursday a number of measures to protect the 2020 presidential election in the United States from foreign interference.
Facebook will thus ban advertisements posted by state-controlled media on its American platforms. In addition, content from state media, and these media themselves, will be marked as such.
China has many media outlets that respond directly to directives from the ruling Communist Party (CCP), such as the new China agency, CCTV television and the English-language newspaper China Daily.
"We hope that the social network concerned will abandon its ideological prejudices," reacted Friday at a regular press conference Geng Shuang, a spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
He called on Facebook to give "fair treatment" to foreign media in the United States and not to "selectively impede".
After the alleged manipulation operations during the 2016 US presidential election, mainly orchestrated from Russia, social networks reacted with an arsenal of measures.
They have been deployed gradually since 2018 to combat false accounts and disinformation, in particular spread by foreign entities.
"People should know if the information they are reading comes from a publication that may be under the influence of a government," said Nathaniel Gleicher, director of cybersecurity regulations for Facebook.
This announcement by the American social network comes as relations between Beijing and Washington have deteriorated markedly in recent months.
The two governments have each expelled journalists from the other country and the tone has risen on many subjects, from the Covid-19 epidemic to Hong Kong's human rights.
© 2020 AFP