Bracing for a contentious election with no immediate results and possible “civil unrest,”
But it's not clear the changes are enough.
The company said Thursday it will restrict new political ads in the week before the election and remove posts that convey misinformation about COVID-19 and voting. It will also attach links with official results to posts by candidates and campaigns that prematurely declare victory.
“This election is not going to be business as usual. We all have a responsibility to protect our democracy,” Facebook CEO
Some activists hailed the new policies but said the onus will be on Facebook to enforce them. And others were skeptical that they'll really make a difference.
“Voting starts in
She called the announcement a “PR stunt designed to distract from the fact that
“Facebook’s biggest problem has always been enforcement,” he said. “Even when it creates reasonable policies that seem well-meaning, it gets defeated by its own scale. So I am not optimistic that this will be terribly effective.”
Facebook and other social media companies are being scrutinized over how they handle misinformation, given problems with President
With the nation divided, and election results potentially taking days or weeks to be finalized, there could be an “increased risk of civil unrest across the country," Zuckerberg said.
Civil rights groups said they directly pitched Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives to make many of the changes announced Thursday.
“These are really significant steps but everything is going to depend on the enforcement,” said
In July, Trump refused to publicly commit to accepting the results of the upcoming election as he scoffed at polls that showed him lagging behind Democratic rival
Under the new measures,
Trump campaign spokeswoman
Posts with obvious misinformation on voting policies and the coronavirus pandemic will also be removed. Users can only forward articles to a maximum of five others on Messenger, Facebook’s messaging app. The company also will work with Reuters to provide official election results and make the information available both on its platform and with push notifications.
After being caught off-guard by Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election,
Zuckerberg said
“Just this week, we took down a network of 13 accounts and two pages that were trying to mislead Americans and amplify division,” he said.
But experts and Facebook’s own employees have said the measures have not been enough to stop the spread of misinformation, including from politicians. Internal dissent among Facebook employees might have helped influence Zuckerberg’s decision to do something, said
“This is a huge about-face for
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