Facebook to ban fresh political advertising in week before US elections

Facebook says it'll ban political advertising the week prior to the US election, among its most sweeping moves against disinformation yet as CEO Mark Zuckerberg warned of a “threat of civil unrest” following the vote.

Beneath the new measures, Facebook says it will prohibit politicians and campaigns from running new election advertising in the week prior to the election. However, they can still run existing advertisings and change how they are targeted.

The social media giant also vowed to fact check any premature claims of victory, stating that if a applicant tries to declare himself the winner before final votes are tallied “we’ll put in a label with their posts directing people to the state results.”

And it promised to “add an informational label” to any content wanting to delegitimise the results or declare that “lawful voting methods” will result in fraud.

Posts with apparent misinformation on voting policies and the coronavirus pandemic will also be removed. Users can only just forward articles to no more than five others on Messenger, Facebook’s messaging app. The business also will use Reuters to supply official election results and make the info available both on its platform and with push notifications.

“I’m concerned about the challenges people could face when voting. I’m also worried that with our nation so divided and election results potentially taking days and even weeks to be finalised, there may be an increased risk of civil unrest in the united states,” Zuckerberg said in a post.

Democrats have long warned that President Donald Trump and his supporters may make an effort to sow chaos with false claims on November 3, when the vote will need place amid unprecedented health insurance and economic crises, social unrest and protests for racial justice.

The US remains the epicentre of the world’s worst coronavirus outbreak, and voters are anticipated to shift to mail-in voting, with around three-quarters of the populace permitted do so.

Due to this fact officials are warning that the final tally might not exactly be revealed until well after voting day-spurring fears that paranoia and rumour-mongering could hit an all-time high.

Trump-a prolific user of social media who's trailing Democratic challenger Joe Biden in the polls-has recently hurtled down a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories filled with claims that he is victim of a bad coup and/or plans to rig the polls.

Daily, he claims that increased mail-in voting is a gambit to “rig” the election against him, and he has refused to state whether he'll accept the results.

He in addition has opposed more funding for the cash-strapped US Postal Service (USPS), acknowledging the money would be used to help process ballots.

And he has refused to condemn the presence of armed vigilantes in the streets during a wave of social justice protests across America this summer, spurring fears of unrest when there is not really a clear result soon after November 3.

Opponents say Trump’s increasingly extreme resistance to expanded mail-in voting-a method already used widely in the United States-is an attempt to suppress voter turnout, while setting up an excuse to challenge the effect if he's defeated.

“This election won't be business as usual,” Zuckerberg, who has come under increasing pressure to do more to combat conspiracy theories at Facebook, said. 

Facebook has long been criticized for not fact-checking political advertising or limiting how they can be targeted at small sets of people.

After being caught off-guard by Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Facebook, Google, Twitter and others companies put safeguards in destination to prevent it from happening again. Which includes taking down posts, groups and accounts that engage in “coordinated inauthentic behavior” and strengthening verification procedures for political ads. This past year, Twitter banned political ads altogether.

Zuckerberg said Facebook had removed a lot more than 100 networks worldwide participating in such interference during the last few years.

“Just this week, we took down a network of 13 accounts and two pages which were trying to mislead Americans and amplify division,” he said.

But experts and Facebook’s own employees say the measures aren't enough to stop the spread of misinformation-including from politicians and in the sort of edited videos.

Facebook had previously drawn criticism because of its advertisings policy, which cited freedom of expression as the reason behind letting politicians like Trump post false info on voting.