Facebook bans Epoch Times from advertising

Facebook has banned The Epoch Times, a right wing website that spent heavily on pro-Trump ads, from running sponsored posts on its platform.

The move follows an NBC News report that triggered Facebook to take a closer look at Epoch’s ads.

NBC News originally reported that The Epoch Times was allegedly creating pages with different, often generic sounding names and then using those to buy ads that bypassed Facebook’s advertising transparency policies.

The pages themselves have not been affected.

Although the ads these pages were apparently running were decidedly pro-Trump and also spread conspiracy theories about his political rivals, it wasn’t necessarily the ads that got Epoch into trouble.

Rather, it was the company’s alleged efforts to bypass Facebook’s transparency requirements that include clear labeling and additional information about the organization behind the ads.

Epoch was allegedly doing this in attempt to hide millions of dollars in “dark money” funded ads without having to reveal the true source of funding.