The Wall Street Journal reported that Google and Facebook pledged to help one another if they ever faced an investigation into their pact to work together in online advertising. The tech giants reportedly cut a deal in 2018 in which Facebook agreed not to compete with Google’s online advertising tools. They were reportedly aware the deal could result in an antitrust probe and agreed to team up if they ever faced an antitrust investigation.

The story is based on an unredacted version of a lawsuit filed by 10 U.S. states against Google last week that was seen by the Journal.

Google and Facebook reportedly made a deal in September 2018 in which Facebook agreed not to compete with Google’s online advertising tools. In return, the social media giant was given “special treatment” when it used them itself, according to the Journal.

The lawsuit reportedly states that Google and Facebook knew their deal could result in antitrust investigations.

A Google spokesperson told CNBC that the claims made in the lawsuit were inaccurate. “The idea that this was a secret deal is just wrong. We’ve been public about this partnership for years,” they said.

Facebook did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

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According To Iran News, Facebook is adopting a number of measures against Iranian, Russian, and Chinese outlets seemingly for monitoring US election and preventing any interference in the competition.

The world’s biggest social network will apply the label to Russia’s Sputnik, Iran’s Press TV and China’s Xinhua News, according to a partial list Facebook provided. The company will apply the label to about 200 pages at the outset, Reuters reported.

Facebook will not label any US-based news organizations for now, as it determined that even US government-run outlets have editorial independence, Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, said in an interview.

Facebook, which has acknowledged its failure to stop Russian use of its platforms to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, has since stepped up its defenses and imposed greater transparency requirements for pages and ads on its platforms.

The company announced plans last year to create a state media label, but is introducing it amid criticism over its hands-off treatment of misleading and racially charged posts by U.S. President Donald Trump.

The new measure comes just months ahead of the November U.S. presidential election.

Under the move, Facebook will not use the label for media outlets affiliated with individual political figures or parties, which Gleicher said could push “boundaries that are very, very slippery.”

“What we want to do here is start with the most critical case,” he said.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters during a daily briefing in Beijing on Friday that social media companies should not selectively create obstacles for media agencies. ”We hope that the relevant social media platform can put aside the ideological bias and hold an open and accepting attitude towards each country’s media role,” he said.

Sputnik in a statement shared with Reuters urged governments “to regulate Facebook when it tries to impose U.S.-inspired suppression of the freedom of speech.”

Facebook is not the first company to take such action.

YouTube, owned by Alphabet Inc’s Google (GOOGL.O), in 2018 started identifying video channels that predominantly carry news items and are funded by governments. But critics charge YouTube has failed to label some state news outlets, allowing them to earn ad revenue from videos with misinformation and propaganda.

In a blog post, Facebook said its label would appear on pages globally, as well as on News Feed posts within the United States.

Facebook also said it would ban U.S.-targeted ads from state-controlled entities “out of an abundance of caution” ahead of the November presidential election. Elsewhere, the ads will receive a label.

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Facebook said Friday it removed more than 900 accounts, groups, and pages on its own platform and Instagram for using fake accounts to mislead users, including with false profile photos generated by artificial intelligence.

The social media company traced the accounts to The BL (Beauty of Life), a US-based media company that also operates out of Vietnam that Facebook linked to Epoch Media Group, owner of The Epoch Times.

The Epoch Times is known for its support of Trump and favorable coverage of far-right politicians in Europe.

The organization was founded in 2000 by John Tang and a group of Chinese Americans associated with the Falun Gong spiritual movement.

Facebook said the accounts pushed anti-impeachment and pro-Trump messages while posing as everyday Americans.

The BL Facebook accounts were shut down for “coordinated inauthentic behavior on behalf of a government or foreign actor,” Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, said a statement.

The Epoch Times is among the first to make widespread use of artificially generated profile pictures and spent more than $9 million on advertising, according to researchers from Facebook, Graphika and the Digitial Forensics Research Lab.

Facebook said The BL’s now-removed Facebook page “repeatedly violated a number of our policies, including our policies against coordinated inauthentic behavior, spam, and misrepresentation.”

Facebook said some of the accounts in its website, including those with fictitious administrators, were explicitly dedicated to supporting Trump, while others combined politics with other topics.

One account identified by the outside researchers was called “Stand with President Trump 2020.”

“Alongside pro-Trump material, these assets posted large quantities of material attacking his critics and rivals, often presenting users with a partisan statement and urging them to respond if they agreed,” the researchers wrote in a report on the operation.

The takedown followed investigative stories by NBC on the Epoch Times’ heavy use of Facebook.

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Iran’s Farabi Cinema Foundation, as one of the main shareholders of the movie, which was officially banned in 2015, announced on Saturday that it will take legal action against those who are involved in this piracy.

In a statement published on Sunday, Darvish also asked Iran’s police, Foreign Ministry, Interior Ministry, Legal Department of the Presidential Office and other relevant organizations to investigate the issue and to stop illegal copying of his film.

He also called on people to not watch, download, and/or copy his film and also to prevent others from doing these “haram and illegal actions.”

Darvish spent 11 years making the film, which was completed in 2013. Its premiere during the 32nd Fajr International Film Festival in Tehran in February 2014 sparked a storm of protest from some ulemas over its depiction of Shia saints.

Meanwhile, the film was honored at the festival with Crystal Simorghs in eight categories, including best film and best director.

The faces of the actors playing the roles of Hazrat Abbas (AS), the brother of Imam Hussein (AS), Hazrat Ali-Akbar (AS) and Hazrat Ali Asghar (AS), the sons of the Imam, and Hazrat Qasim (AS), the son of Imam Hassan (AS), have been depicted graphically in scenes of the film.

In a letter sent to the Cinema Organization of Iran at that time, the Muslim cleric Ayatollah Nasser Makarem Shirazi censured the screening of the film.

“We know that this action will cause a negative impact… Does the Iran Cinema Organization plan to infringe upon sanctities and ignore the redlines?,” he wrote.

The depiction of Prophet Muhammad (S) and his household in any art production is not allowed by ulemas.

The Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance promised the clerics that it would only authorize the movie after some modifications. As a result, over 40 minutes of the original film were cut out.

However, the alterations failed to placate the clerics and the culture ministry stopped screening the film hours after its premiere at Iranian theaters on July 15, 2015 following protests by them and certain people.

The culture ministry then announced that the film would be screened at Iranian theaters in the near future after additional modifications were made to the production. However, the film never hit the silver screens again.

Darvish and his producer filed a lawsuit against the culture ministry in a Tehran court, which ruled that the culture ministry must buy shares in the movie as compensation.

Consequently, the Farabi Cinema Foundation and Iranian Visual Media Institute, two organizations affiliated with the culture ministry, bought shares in the production.

The ministry allowed the film to be screened in international events. It won the grand prize for the best full-length feature at the 7th Baghdad International Film Festival in Iraq in October 2015.

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The New York Police Department had received an anonymous tip about a bomb threat regarding Facebook’s campus in Menlo Park, California, and alerted local authorities at about 4:30 p.m., a spokeswoman for the Menlo Park police said, Reuters reported.

Late on Tuesday, police said the building was secure, however.

“The San Mateo County bomb unit was dispatched with explosive detection dogs that conducted a sweep of the building and found no suspicious packages or devices,” they said.

“The building is all clear and secure.”

Menlo Park police spokeswoman Nicole Acker had said the evacuation was confined to a three-story facility on campus that was not the headquarters building, but a company spokesman said by email that “a few” buildings on the site had been evacuated.

Everyone was safe, Facebook and police said.

“We take the safety and security of our people at Facebook extremely seriously and are glad that everyone is safe,” said spokeswoman Genevieve Grdina, adding that the firm had taken swift action to evacuate several buildings.

“We are working closely with local authorities to investigate this threat and further monitor the situation.”

Another Silicon Valley company to face a security threat in the recent past was YouTube. In April, a woman opened fire at its headquarters in San Francisco, wounding three people before she shot herself dead.

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“There are certain forms of misinformation that have contributed to physical harm, and we are making a policy change which will enable us to take that type of content down,” a Facebook spokesman said after a briefing on the policy at the company’s campus in Silicon Valley.

“We will be begin implementing the policy during the coming months.”

For example, Facebook may remove inaccurate or misleading contect, such as doctored photos, created or shared to stir up to ignite volatile situations in the real world.

The social network said it is partnering with local organizations and authorities adept at identifying when posts are false and likely to prompt violence.

Misinformation removed in Sri Lanka under the new policy included content falsely contending that Muslims were poisoning food given or sold to Buddhists, according to Facebook.

Hate speech and threats deemed credible are violations of Facebook rules, and are removed.

The new policy takes another step back, eliminating content that may not be explicitly violent but which seems likely to encourage such behavior.

Facebook has been lambasted for allowing rumors or blatantly false information to circulate that may have contributed to violence.

Many see Facebook as being used as a vehicle for spreading false information in recent years.

Facebook has implemented a series of changes aimed at fighting use of the social network to spread misinformation, from fabrications that incite violence to untruths that sway elections.

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