White House Won’t Say If It’s Behind Facebook Gun Ban

By Nicole Duran. The White House on Monday refused to say whether Facebook’s recent decision to ban users from facilitating the sale of guns, parts and ammunition was the result of pressure from the Obama administration.

“We welcome this step,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Monday, just days after Facebook’s Friday announcement. “We talked about how the Internet is a loophole” for people seeking to buy guns without undergoing background checks, he said. It’s a “common-sense effort to prevent guns from easily falling into the hands of criminals or other individuals who shouldn’t be allowed to access guns,” he said.

(Read more from “White House Won’t Say If It’s Behind Facebook Gun Ban” HERE)

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Facebook and Instagram Are Banning Private Gun Sales

By Dave Smith. Facebook has decided to ban the private sales of firearms on its social network.

Instagram, Facebook’s photo-sharing platform, is doing the same.

“Over the last two years, more and more people have been using Facebook to discover products and to buy and sell things to one another,” Facebook’s head of product policy said in a statement to The New York Times . . .

Facebook says it will rely on its 1.6 billion users to report any violations of these new rules — this especially goes for Facebook’s private messaging service Facebook Messenger, since Facebook does not read the content of messages sent on that platform. Facebook already bans the private sales of pharmaceuticals and illegal drugs like marijuana. (Read more from “Facebook and Instagram Are Banning Private Gun Sales” HERE)

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