Facebook this morning announced a number of updates intended to avoid misinformation and chaos in the lead-up to Election Day in the US, including a ban on new political ads a week before Nov. 3.
No New Political or Issue Ads
“We’re going to block new political and issue ads during the final week of the campaign,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg writes in a Facebook post. “It’s important that campaigns can run get out the vote campaigns, and I generally believe 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.”
Facebook won’t accept new ads in the last week of the campaign, but that doesn’t mean you won’t see them on the social network. Anyone who buys ads before that one-week deadline is in the clear. “Advertisers will be able to continue running ads they started running before the final week and adjust the targeting for those ads, but those ads will already be published transparently in our Ads Library so anyone, including fact-checkers and journalists, can scrutinize them,” Zuckerberg says.
Expanded Crackdown on Voting Misinformation
Facebook is also expanding its crackdown on voting misinformation. “We already committed to partnering with state election authorities to identify and remove false claims about polling conditions in the last 72 hours of the campaign, but given that this election will include large amounts of early voting, we’re extending that period to begin now and continue through the election until we have a clear result,” Zuckerberg writes.
The company is consulting with state election officials on whether certain voting claims are accurate, he adds.
“We already remove explicit misrepresentations about how or when to vote that could cause someone to lose their opportunity to vote—for example, saying things like ‘you can send in your mail ballot up to 3 days after election day,’ which is obviously not true,” Zuckerberg explains. “We’re now expanding this policy to include implicit misrepresentations about voting too, like ‘I hear anybody with a driver’s license gets a ballot this year,’ because it might mislead you about what you need to do to get a ballot, even if that wouldn’t necessarily invalidate your vote by itself.”
Forwarding Limits on Facebook Messenger
(Image: Facebook)
Like it did with WhatsApp, meanwhile, Facebook will limit message forwarding on Messenger so you can only send something to five people or groups at a time. “Limiting forwarding is an effective way to slow the spread of viral misinformation and harmful content that has the potential to cause real world harm,” says Jay Sullivan, Director of Product Management, Messenger Privacy and Safety.
The WhatsApp limits came about amid a surge in coronavirus misinformation, and Facebook expects that to continue in the run-up to Election Day. As such, it’ll remove Facebook posts that say you’ll get COVID-19 if you vote, and add links to authoritative information about the coronavirus to posts that use COVID-19 to discourage voting.
Don’t Expect Results on Election Night
Zuckerberg also expects that a jump in mail-in voting means we might not have a definitive answer on election night. “It’s important that we prepare for this possibility in advance and understand that there could be a period of intense claims and counter-claims as the final results are counted,” he writes.
Facebook will make this clear with notices in its Voting Information Center and will partner with Reuters and the National Election Pool on election results. “We’ll show this in the Voting Information Center so it’s easily accessible, and we’ll notify people proactively as results become available,” he says. “Importantly, if any candidate or campaign tries to declare victory before the results are in, we’ll add a label to their post educating that official results are not yet in and directing people to the official results.”
The social network also plans to label posts that look to delegitimize legal voting methods—”for example, by claiming that lawful methods of voting will lead to fraud,” Zuckberg says.
Foreign Interference Is Still a Thing
Though Zuckberg famously argued in 2016 that fake news swaying an election was a “crazy idea,” he has come around to the impact of foreign election meddling. “This threat hasn’t gone away,” he writes today.
This week, Facebook took down a network of 13 accounts and two pages that were trying to mislead Americans and amplify division, he says. “However, we’re increasingly seeing attempts to undermine the legitimacy of our elections from within our own borders.”
“I believe our democracy is strong enough to withstand this challenge and deliver a free and fair election—even if it takes time for every vote to be counted. We’ve voted during global pandemics before. We can do this,” Zuckerberg concludes. “But it’s going to take a concerted effort by all of us—political parties and candidates, election authorities, the media and social networks, and ultimately voters as well—to live up to our responsibilities.”
That’s All, Folks
Don’t expect any other changes to Facebook’s policies, meanwhile. “We’ll enforce the policies I outlined above as well as all our existing policies around voter suppression and voting misinformation, but to ensure there are clear and consistent rules, we are not planning to make further changes to our election-related policies between now and the official declaration of the result,” according to Zuckerberg.
