Some Facebook critics were hardly reassured by its announcement Thursday (Sept. 3) that it would not run new political or issue ads in the week before the November election, branding it a PR stunt and essentially a nothing burger.

Women's group Ultraviolet minced no words, calling Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg a "menace to democracy."

Of the announced political ad moratorium, which Zuckerberg announced in a Facebook post, the group suggested that a week before election day is effectively a non sequitur.

Related: Facebook Won't Run New Political Ads Week Before Election

“Voting starts in North Carolina tomorrow," pointed out Ultraviolet executive director Shaunna Thomas. "Election Day isn’t in two months, it’s tomorrow and every day after, which means voters in that state and many others that vote early will be subject to months of dishonest ads on Facebook’s platform. For women and people of color running for office, these months of unchecked, untrue racist and sexist attacks are especially damaging."

“If Facebook were serious about stopping the threats of disinformation and election interference it would be fact-checking and removing political ads, in addition to intentionally deceptive posts, that proliferate across the platform," Thomas said. "Because the real truth that Facebook refuses to acknowledge is that ads are just a small part of the massive problem at Facebook."

Liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America was equally unimpressed.

“Facebook’s new ad policy announcement is designed to fool the media and the public into thinking the company is taking disinformation seriously," said the group's president, Angelo Carusone. "[T]his new policy is pointless - and may even do more harm than good. Makes no mistake - you can still spread misinformation with political ads on Facebook, you just can’t do it with NEW ads just ONE week before Election Day. According to this new policy, political ads that have at least one impression prior to Oct. 27th, can be rerun and re-targeted to new groups during the week of Election Day.  

“Facebook’s policy will only further empower those seeking to do harm, while weakening the ability of outside forces to counteract attacks and misinformation, something that has proven necessary given Facebook’s weak enforcement."

Back in June, and under pressure from Washington, civil rights groups, advertisers and others, Facebook announced it is going to start moderating political content more closely, but Zuckerberg and Facebook have been reluctant to take down political speech.

Women's advocacy group UltraViolet Action is blaming "sexist media coverage" in large part for Elizabeth Warren's decision Thursday (March 5) to drop out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Various reports had Warren suspending her campaign, though her campaign Web site was still seeking supporters with the rallying cry: "LET’S DREAM BIG, FIGHT HARD, AND WIN."

Related: UltraViolet Buys TV Ads to Block Kavanaugh Nomination

"[W]ith earned media driving this election cycle, just as it did in 2016, we once again saw the devastatingly decisive impact that sexist and racist news coverage has on women and people of color running for office.," said UltraViolet Action co-founder Shaunna Thomas."We saw the impact of the DNC policy decisions that kept candidates of color off the debate stage, starving them of needed exposure, and the deep bias on the part of mainstream media that has shaped voters perceptions of who is electable. It is clear from Warren’s campaign that there is a glass ceiling held firmly in place for women by a media who relentlessly shape voters perceptions of who is electable through a deeply sexist lens."

"In a year in which primary voters' top concerns is electability - the media has had a massive impact on how voters perceived the candidates - and when Warren was on the top of the polls, the main narrative driven by the media was that she was not electable," she added. "That’s unacceptable."

Warren has leveled the media criticism herself.

At a CNN town hall last year, she talked about her run for the Senate in 2012. She said the early news coverage was "about what I'm wearing, it's about my hair, it's about my voice, it's about whether or not I smile enough -- I didn't." And she won anyway.

Thomas suggested there was similar focus this time around, but with a different result.

It is the media's sexism that determined Warren's fate...[t]he media is responsible for hurting her ability to win support among primary voters."

UltraViolet, the Hollywood-founded digital video locker that could never enlist key constituents including Disney, Apple, Amazon and Google, has finally called it quits.

The Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem, which launched UltraViolet in 2012, sent out a note to the cloud-based locker’s 30 million users Thursday informing them that it will close on July 31. Users can still access their titles, and redeem codes for new ones, as usual over the next six months.

Once the UltraViolet library is closed, titles redeemed within the individual user libraries of participating online retailers including Vudu, FandangoNow and Flixter, will still be available. But a user who purchased, say for example, Crazy Rich Asians via Vudu on Aug. 1 will no longer be able to also access the title through the FandangoNow app. For that reason, UltraViolet is advising users to redeem their UltraViolet library titles with as many participating retailers as they can before the service shuts down.

UltraViolet was created amid the sunsetting of the DVD/Blu-ray era as a means of rekindling the collection bug among consumers with digital formats. In what was an entirely silo’d transactional business at the time, a movie purchased in Apple’s iTunes Store couldn’t be played via, say, the Vudu app, and vice versa. Or, a movie purchased on Blu-ray couldn’t be downloaded to a digital device, unless the movie was purchased again via digital store.

However, a movie purchased with an UltraViolet redeemable code—whether on disc or digital—could be accessed through any UltraViolet-participating retailer.

Related: Comcast Hooks Xfinity Digital Store to Movies Anywhere App

All the major Hollywood studios were onboard save for Disney, which instead opted to develop its own locker, Disney Moves Anywhere. Disney relaunched the service in 2017, removing its name from the brand.

With key digital stores that were holdouts for UltraViolet—iTunes, Amazon and Google Play—signed onto Movies Anywhere, key UltraViolet content constituents 20th Century Fox, Universal Pictures and Lionsgate switched sides.