Facebook says it labeled 180 million debunked posts ahead of the election

Facebook on Thursday said it slapped warnings on more than 180 million pieces of content that were debunked by fact-checkers during the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election.

Between March 1 and Election Day, it also removed more than 265,000 pieces of content in the U.S. for voter interference. The company did not reveal how effective its labels are, except to say that when a label obscures a post, 95 percent of people do not click to see what is behind the warning screen.

The company estimated it helped register 4.5 million voters in the U.S. this year across Facebook, Instagram and Messenger, and helped 100,000 sign up to be poll workers. Since its launch, 140 million people have visited the company’s voting information center, and on Election Day, 33 million people visited its election center, which included results as they came in.

Facebook also said in its update its artificial intelligence systems are getting significantly better at rooting out posts with hate speech, even as the content continues to proliferate on its social media sites.