Facebook bans ads that seek to delegitimize the election or make false claims about voting

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Facebook will ban any ads that seek to delegitimize the outcome of the election, the company said Wednesday.

Rob Leathern, Facebook director of product management, said the policy applies to any ads that make false claims about voting by mail or other methods of voting. It also bans the use of isolated incidents of voter fraud to discredit the result of an election, Leathern said.

“These changes apply to ads across Facebook and Instagram, and are effective immediately,” he tweeted.

The social media giant announced last week that it would prohibit ads that make premature declarations of victory. Organic posts that make false claims are labeled.

The policy change appears aimed at President Trump’s use of social media as a megaphone to spread falsehoods about mail-in voting election and claims of voter fraud.

Facebook and other social media companies have made sweeping changes in the critical lead up to this year’s highly contentious election in which an unprecedented number of Americans are expected to vote by mail due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Earlier this week, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden turned up the pressure on Facebook to take down Trump’s posts containing voting misinformation as the two prepared to face each other in the first presidential debate.

In a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday, the Biden campaign accused Facebook of regressing in its mission to aggressively fight misinformation about the 2020 election by not barring posts from the president that misrepresent the voting process.


Twitter may remove unverified election result claims


©2020 USA Today
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Citation:
Facebook bans ads that seek to delegitimize the election or make false claims about voting (2020, October 1)
retrieved 1 October 2020
from https://techxplore.com/news/2020-10-facebook-ads-delegitimize-election-false.html

This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.


Speak Your Mind

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Get in Touch

350FansLike
100FollowersFollow
281FollowersFollow
150FollowersFollow

Recommend for You

Oh hi there 👋
It’s nice to meet you.

Subscribe and receive our weekly newsletter packed with awesome articles that really matters to you!

We don’t spam! Read our privacy policy for more info.

You might also like

WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar says he doesn’t think he...

On Thursday, AT&T's WarnerMedia announced it would release its entire 2021 slate of films...

Signals from distant stars connect optical atomic clocks across...

Using radio telescopes observing distant stars, scientists have connected optical atomic clocks on different...