Facebook ramps up effort to curb false political advertising.
Social media site will bar new political ads week leading to Nov. 3
SAN FRANCISCO >> Facebook on Thursday moved to clamp down on any confusion about the November election on its service, rolling out a sweeping set of changes to try to limit voter misinformation and to prevent interference from President Donald Trump and other politicians.
In an acknowledgment of how powerful its effect on public discourse can be, Facebook said it planned to bar any new political ads on its site in the week before Election Day. The social network said it would also strengthen measures against posts that try to dissuade people from voting. Postelection, it said it would quash any candidates’ attempts at claiming false victories by redirecting users to accurate information on the results.
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, wrote in a post Thursday that the divisions in the United States and the prospect of election results taking days or weeks to finalize could lead “to an increased risk of civil unrest across the country.”
Some of the actions may unintentionally make Facebook even more politicized before the election, critics said. When political ads are blocked on the site, right-wing publishers on Facebook, such as Breitbart and Fox News, could fill the vacuum, said Tara McGowan, chief executive of liberal nonprofit group Acronym.
“By banning new political ads in the final critical days of the 2020 election, Facebook has decided to tip the scales of the election to those with the greatest followings on Facebook and that includes President Trump and the right-wing media that serves him,” she said.
The Trump campaign disputed that, saying people would instead be influenced on Facebook by ads from “biased” media. It added that the social network was censoring politicians.
“When millions of voters will be making their decisions, the president will be silenced by the Silicon Valley mafia, who will at the same time allow corporate media to run their biased ads to swing voters in key states,” said Samantha Zager, a Trump campaign spokeswoman.
Hours after rolling out its changes, Facebook applied its new rules to one of Trump’s posts on his Facebook page, in which he cast doubt on the voteby-mail process. The company added a warning label to the post. The label read, “Voting by mail has a long history of trustworthiness in the U.S. and the same is predicted this year.”