Catch up on the weekend’s top five stories with this list compiled by The Fly: 1. Facebook (FB) is considering a ban on political ads in the days before November’s U.S. presidential election as a way to cut down on the viral spread of misinformation and voter suppression, Bloomberg’s Kurt Wagner and Naomi Nix reporte, citing people familiar with the matter. The social media giant has been under fire for weeks from civil rights leaders for what they say is a failure by the company to properly enforce its policies around hate speech and information meant to keep voters from participating, the authors noted. 2. After closing in March because of the pandemic, Walt Disney World (DIS) began tossing confetti again at 9am on Saturday, with two of the four major parks, the Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom, welcoming back a limited number of temperature-checked visitors, The New York Times’ Brooks Barnes reported. Epcot and Disney’s Hollywood Studios were set to reopen on Wednesday, the author noted, as the coronavirus continues its rampage through Florida, with officials reporting over 15,000 new infections on Sunday. 3. In the wake of Facebook’s first big scandal in 2018, Barron’s labeled the company a sin stock – controversial but still full of upside, and now Facebook finds itself in the middle of a global boycott from 1,000 advertisers, brought to task by a coalition of civil-rights groups that cite hate speech and voter suppression that appear on its platform, Max Cherney wrote in this week’s edition of Barron’s. While most stocks would crater under that kind of pressure, Facebook is well insulated from advertiser defections, even with big brands like Coca-Cola (KO), Unilever (UL) and Starbucks (SBUX) pausing their spending given its 8M customers, mostly small and medium-sized businesses buying adds, the author notes. 4. Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, and other major oil-producing countries are likely to increase their output in August, as coronavirus lockdowns ease and demand begins to rise again, The New York Times’s Stanley Reed reported. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Russia and other producers are expected to modestly ease the record production cuts that they agreed to in April and later extended through July, the author notes. A committee of key officials from the OPEC and Russia will meet on Wednesday by video conference to discuss their approach to the market. Publicly traded companies in the space include BP (BP), Chevron (CVX), ConocoPhillips (COP), Exxon Mobil (XOM), Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A) and Total (TOT). 5. Nokia (NOK), Nordstrom (JWN), and ASML (ASML) saw positive mentions in this week’s edition of Barron’s.
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