Facebook has been criticized for refusing to verify political ads more widely.
San Francisco:
Facebook Inc on Wednesday banned ads on its flagship website and Instagram photo and video sharing service that claim widespread election fraud, suggest U.S. election results are invalid, or attack any method of voting.
The company announced the new rules in a blog post, adding to previous restrictions on premature claims of election victory.
The move came a day after US President Donald Trump used the first televised debate with Democratic challenger Joe Biden to amplify his baseless claims that the November 3 presidential election was “rigged.”
Trump has been particularly critical of the mail-in ballots, and he cited a number of small independent incidents to say that fraud is already happening on a large scale.
Facebook has been criticized for refusing to verify political ads more broadly and for widespread organic disinformation.
Citing hate speech rules, he also proposed Wednesday to remove ads from the Trump campaign suggesting immigrants could be a major source of coronavirus infections.
Facebook said the new ban on election ads would include those that “describe voting or taking part in the census as unnecessary / meaningless” or that “delegitimize any legal method or process of voting or tabulating votes … as illegal , inherently fraudulent or corrupt.
Facebook also cited ads labeling an election fraudulent or corrupt because the outcome was not clear on election night or because ballots received afterwards were still counted.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
