Facebook plans to limit ads in the week before election
Facebook plans to block new advertising the week before the presidential election — the first time the company has taken action to limit political advertising in the United States, the company said Thursday.
The move to limit ads, part of a spate of election-related announcements, is an attempt to combat efforts to suppress voting and reduce misinformation that is expected to flood social networks as Election Day draws near.
The company also said that it would label posts by any candidate or campaign that tries to declare victory before the final results are in, directing people to the official results from Reuters. It will do the same for any posts that try to delegitimize the outcome of the election — for example, a claim that voting by mail could lead to fraud. It has also started to limit users’ ability to forward articles on its Messenger platform to large groups of people.
“The U.S. elections are just two months away, and with COVID-19 affecting communities across the country, I’m concerned about the challenges people could face when voting,” Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a post Thursday morning. “I’m also worried that with our nation so divided and election results potentially taking days or even weeks to be finalized, there could be an increased risk of civil unrest across the country. This election is not going to be business as usual. We all have a responsibility to protect our democracy.”
But the intense political stakes for the company were immediately underscored Thursday morning, as President Donald Trump’s campaign blasted the company for its new policies.
“In the last seven days of the most important election in our history, President Trump will be banned from defending himself on the largest platform in America,” said Samantha Zager, the campaign’s deputy national press secretary.
The move announced Thursday by Facebook does not ban Trump, who has nearly 31 million followers on the social network, from defending himself but rather limits new ads by all politicians in the final days before Nov. 3.
There was no immediate comment from the campaign of Democratic nominee Joe Biden. Democratic campaign committees, however, joined Republicans in objecting to the changes.
“Facebook’s last-minute changes will not prevent disinformation from being shared organically and will still allow political campaigns to run ads with lies,” Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., chairwoman of the Senate Democrats’ fundraising arm, and Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-Ill., who chairs the equivalent group for House Democrats, said in a joint statement.
Top Facebook officials, including Zuckerberg himself, worked directly with civil rights groups and others in developing the new policies in recent weeks, said Vanita Gupta, resident of the Leadership Conference on Civil & Human Rights, a Washington-based umbrella group.
Facebook’s role in spreading political misinformation has been a hotly debated issue since the discovery that false news reports and a Russian operation to influence American voters ran rampant on the platform during the 2016 election. The controversy triggered political backlash and a scramble within the company to establish new policies and systems to avoid a repeat in 2020.
For this election cycle, Trump already has spent $74.7 million on Facebook, significantly more than Biden’s $46.5 million, according to Facebook’s Ad Library.