Facebook said it plans to temporarily suspend all political ads, a move the company said is intended to curb confusion, misinformation and abuse of its services in the days following the presidential election.
The company also said it would remove polls when those posts use military or intimidating language.Executives said the policy applies to everyone, including President Trump and other officials. Trump has urged people to participate in polls, including during a presidential debate, and the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. appeared in an ad last month urging people to “defend their vote” and join an “army” to protect the election.
Facebook executives said such expressions, including the words "army" and "battle," would be banned in the future, but the ad would not be removed for now.
Facebook's moves come amid criticism that the company allows misinformation and scaremongering from politicians and that its policy of not policing political ads has created a loophole for misinformation that has been exploited repeatedly. The company has previously said it would suspend new political ads in the week before the election but allow previously approved ads to continue running.
But it seems that Facebook is slow to enforce and change policies to adapt to a changing political reality in which rules are often violated.
Trump has refused to commit that the transition of power will be peaceful. The company has planned or considered scenarios for how the election, including if Trump or other politicians challenge the election results, Facebook's head of security policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, said in an interview.
To address this possibility, the company said it will send out election night notifications on Facebook and Instagram to share the latest results, in partnership with Reuters. If a presidential candidate or party declares victory early, the company will place labels on posts that say the count is underway or highlight the post with the winner's name.
“We believe we’ve done far more than any other company” to combat misinformation, said Guy Rosen, Facebook’s vice president of integrity. “We felt it was appropriate to introduce these new measures as we move into the final stages of the election.”
Facebook did not say how long it would continue to suspend ads, but in an internal memo to sales staff obtained by The Washington Post, executives instructed staff to tell advertisers that the ban would last a week.
Twitter has also been preparing extensively for the election. The company has investigated nearly a dozen scenarios of foreign and domestic disinformation for election night and the week after Election Day. That planning includes scenarios where people try to discourage others from voting by saying there are long lines at polling places, and a scenario in which a “foreign power” hacks election information and leaks it on social media. The company has banned all political ads and has removed or added warning labels to many tweets that violate its rules on combating voter suppression and election interference, including at least 14 from President Trump.
