Despite pressure to change its policy on false or misleading political advertisements, Facebook on Thursday announced that it will largely maintain the status quo ahead of the 2020 election. The company will give users “more controls” over the type and amount of ads they see, it said in a blog post, but will refrain from banning ads entirely or policing their content, as critics have called for. “In the absence of regulation, Facebook and other companies are left to design their own policies,” Rob Leathern, Facebook’s director of product management, wrote in the post. “We have based ours on the principle that people should be able to hear from those who wish to lead them, warts and all, and that what they say should be scrutinized and debated in public.”

Facebook’s position, unsurprisingly, echoes that of Mark Zuckerberg, who has suggested in response to criticism of his company’s advertising policies that fact-checking politicians’ claims would amount to censorship. He’s held firm, even as competitors took more drastic action; Twitter banned political ads entirely, and Google limited the way the ads could be targeted. Even Spotify announced it would “pause” political ads until they could be fact-checked properly. Leathern said that Facebook considered such action, but ultimately decided against it because they “don’t think decisions about political ads should be made by private companies.” He added, seeking to shift responsibility to lawmakers and other regulators, “The sooner Facebook and other companies are subject to democratically accountable rules on this the better.”

This, too, echoes Zuckerberg; the Facebook C.E.O. has sought to get ahead of would-be government regulators by proposing more industry-friendly regulations of his own. At the same time as he’s called for increased regulation, however, Zuck has privately said he would “fight” anyone who might seek to impose rules on his company.

Zuckerberg has also made it a point to connect with Donald Trump, attending a dinner with the White House with conservative Facebook board member Peter Thiel. Notably, the Trump campaign has complained that Facebook, in changing its policy, could rob it of tools that might help to sway voters. That Facebook will ultimately keep its policy in place is perhaps good news for those factions. The Trump campaign likely benefited from that approach last cycle, as Facebook’s former head of advertising, Andrew Bosworth, acknowledged in a message to employees, and could do so again this November.

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