Facebook is lifting ban on political ads

Facebook says it is lifting its ban on political and social-issue ads put in place after the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

Political candidates, groups and others will be able to place ads on Facebook and Instagram beginning on Thursday.

Restricting political advertisements following the November election was among the host of measures Facebook put in place last year in an attempt to ensure its platform is not used to sow chaos and spread misinformation.

Facebook halted U.S. political ads when the polls closed on Nov. 3, an extension of an earlier restriction on new political ads in the week leading up to Election

Day.

“We’ve heard a lot of feedback about this and learned more about political and electoral ads during this election cycle,” the company said in a blog post Wednesday. “As a result, we plan to use the coming months to take a closer look at how these ads work on our service to see where further changes may be merited.”

Twitter has banned political ads permanently.

said Wednesday that its index of service sector activity dropped to a reading of 55.5 percent in February, down 3.4 percentage-points from January when activity neared a two-year high.

Even with the decline, it was the ninth straight month of growth in the services sector. Any reading above 50 signifies growth.

Economists had expected some rollback from the January high but the size of the February drop was much bigger than expected, driven by a sharp decline in the new orders index. That fell to 51.9 percent, down from a January reading of 61.8 percent. The index readings for business activity and employment also fell.

Many analysts saw the slowdown in services sector activity in February as just a brief pullback from January’s high level with further gains coming in the months ahead.

The report said that service sector businesses were mostly optimistic about the recovery although they did cite supply chain problems such as production-capacity restraints and material shortages.