Facebook Inc. will pay $2.5 billion to resolve a civil antitrust lawsuit over its failure to remove fake news.
The U.S. Department of Justice filed a complaint on Wednesday in federal court in San Francisco against Facebook, accusing it of using its News Feed platform to allow content to appear on its site without verification.
The complaint says that Facebook violated Section 5 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, which prohibits unfair business practices and encourages the disclosure of information.
Facebook has already paid $4.2 billion to the Justice Department in a settlement with the FTC over allegations that it used fake news and misleading ads in its platform.