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Stephen King Quits Facebook

By February 9, 2020Culture, News

Stephen King, author of IT and The Stand has quit Facebook.

The outspoken novelist told his 5.6 million Twitter followers that he was uncomfortable with the “flood of false information allowed in its political advertising”.

He also mentioned how he was not confident the social network platform was protecting “users’ privacy”.

He joins a host of celebrity names to quit Facebook, including Star Wars actor Mark Hamill, comedian Will Ferrell, and timeless icon Cher.

Mr King added that fans could still to follow him and his dog Molly on Twitter.

Facebook decided not to change the way it fact-checked political adverts and many people are unhappy. It has been argued that private companies like Facebook should not censor politicians and some called for government involvement.

Showing how it should be done, Jack Dorsey of Twitter announced in October that the platform would ban all political advertising, and it was hoped that Facebook would follow suit.

US political parties are predicted to spend about $6bn (£4.6bn) in advertising in the run-up to the 2020 elections and according Kantar Research almost 20% of this will be online.

According to founder Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s revenue from political ads is less than 0.5% but people are calling for it to change to 0%.

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