Facebook offers choice on ads

For months, Facebook has weathered criticism for its willingness to show all types of political advertising to its billions of users, even if those ads contained lies.

Now the company is changing tack — sort of.

On Tuesday, the social network said it would allow people in the US to opt out of seeing social issue, electoral or political ads from candidates or political action committees in their Facebook or Instagram feeds. The ability to hide those ads will begin with a small group of users, before rolling out in the coming weeks to the rest of the US and later to several other countries.