Facebook says it will not remove fake news from its platform but will demote such news in the news feed.

The social networking site says removing the news will be against its community standards and will be contrary to the basic principles of free speech because different publishers often had very different points of view.

However it says that posts which will be deemed to be fake news will be "demoted" in the news feed.

Facebook is currently running an advertising campaign in the United Kingdom against fake news that declares "fake news is not our friend".