Facebook to reduce political activity in U.S.

Facebook Inc. said that for future presidential campaigns, it will pull back from the kind of on-site support it gave Donald Trump for his 2016 presidential race, Bloomberg reported.

The company will still offer technical support and basic training to candidate campaigns and political advocacy organizations, but it won’t visit campaign headquarters with as much frequency or provide as much strategic support as it did for Trump ahead of the 2016 election. 

But Facebook is working to improve the company’s political advertising website to give free advice to campaigns more broadly.

The social network was forced to answer questions from U.S. lawmakers about whether it was more supportive of Trump than his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, after Brad Parscale, the Republican’s 2016 digital director, said he was able to get pro-Trump “embeds” from Facebook to help him on strategy. 

Facebook told Congress it "offered identical support" to both campaigns. Trump’s campaign accepted, and Clinton’s didn’t. At the time, the company also disputed the use of the word "embed" to describe the relationship.