iStock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — Google and Facebook are taking steps to ban sites that publish false or misleading information.

Amid criticism that fake news stories appearing online could have influenced the recent presidential election, Google released a statement saying the company “will restrict ad serving on pages that misrepresent, misstate, or conceal information about the publisher, the publisher’s content, or the primary purpose of the web property.”

Facebook has also faced accusations its social media platform allowed posters to share false news content. On Monday, the company moved to ban the fake sites from using Facebook ads on published pages, according to the Wall Street Journal. A spokesman for the company said these sites will be added to the category labeling the hoax sites as misleading, illegal and deceptive sites, all content already banned from the Facebook Audience Network.

“While implied, we have updated the policy to explicitly clarify that this applies to fake news,” the spokesman said, according to WSJ.

Facebook said it will continue to “closely vet all prospective publishers and monitor existing ones to ensure compliance” to the updated policy.

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