Opinion Why Politicians Get a License to Lie

On Monday, Facebook announced a new policy to ban artificial intelligence-generated "deepfakes" as well as videos "edited or synthesized … in ways that aren't apparent to an average person." In theory that sounds like a welcome effort to curb disinformation. But the new policy won't, for example, cover subtly edited videos like last year's slowed down viral Nancy Pelosi clip. And politicians and their ads remain off limits to Facebook's third-party fact checkers. A company spokesman told me Tuesday that if Facebook determines a politician has shared manipulated media in an ad, Facebook will remove it.