Facebook to Freeze Political Ads

Facebook has announced that it will not introduce any new campaign advertising in the seven days prior to the US election on 3 November.

However, the company will also encourage current advertising to continue to be advertised and targeted to various consumers.   

Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg announced the plan in a Facebook post.

He said he was "worried" about the tensions in the country that could possibly lead to civil unrest.

He added that Facebook would also mark the posts of politicians seeking to claim victory before the votes had been counted.

The social network has been criticized for encouraging campaign advertising to be "micro-targeted" on its site so that they are perceived exclusively by small audiences rather than shared more broadly in the days after they surface.

The Mozilla Foundation has argued that this makes it possible for politicians and their allies to parade deception, as a matter of fact, to avoid being held to account until it is too late, particularly as Facebook has previously said that the advertisements put by the candidates will not be reviewed.

The new steps could serve as a precedent for how the firm handles elections elsewhere in the future.

Facebook also revealed that it would remove videos of President Trump encouraging voters in North Carolina to vote twice, which is illegal.

Any videos of Mr. Trump's comments without contextualising information would be taken down, the firm said in a statement: "This video violates our policies prohibiting voter fraud and we will remove it unless it is shared to correct the record."

'Divided nation'

President Trump has repeatedly suggested that the election could be "rigged" by electoral fraud.

However, there is no proof of systematic election manipulation in previous elections.

"This election is not going to be business as usual," said Zuckerberg.

"With our nation so divided and election results potentially taking days or even weeks to be finalised, there could be an increased risk of civil unrest across the country," he added.

In an effort to stymie the spread of rumours and deliberate falsehoods on Facebook, the firm has said it will implement a series of measures.

No new campaign advertisements will be approved in the week before the polls, stating that voters will get Covid-19 if they take part in the referendum, will be deleted.

Knowledge marks will be added to posts attempting to delegitimize the results of the referendum.

Labels can also be added to the posts by candidates claiming victory before the final results are obtained.

Mr Zuckerberg also said that Facebook had also "strengthened" its enforcement policies against movements known to spread conspiracy theories, such as QAnon.

Thousands of Facebook groups associated with these movements had already been removed, he said.

The moves have, however, attracted criticism.

The chief of Media Matters for America - a liberal media monitoring body - described it as being a pointless PR stunt.  

"They will also authorize campaign advertising to be re-run and tailored to new audiences during [the last] week as long as the ad was released and had one experience before 27 October," Angelo Carusone tweeted.

"So, now you can run a bad ad, pause it, and then try it again that week."

The professor who specializes in the relationship between technology and politics has made a similar argument.

"Campaigns will create and run thousands of innovative pieces in the days leading up to the end of the week," said Daniel Kreiss, associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.