Facebook says it will stop accepting political advertisements in the week before the US election, as Mark Zuckerberg warns of “an increased risk of civil unrest across the country”.

Explaining the move, Mr Zuckerberg said: “We’re going to block new political and issue ads during the final week of the campaign.”

He said he “generally” believed that “the best antidote to bad speech is more speech, but in the final days of an election there may not be enough time to contest new claims”.

“So in the week before the election, we won’t accept new political or issue ads,” he continued.