Facebook Will Freeze Political Ads In The Seven Days Before The US Presidential Elections 2020
Trump Stated That This Year's Election Might Suffer From Voter Scam
The social media platform Facebook has announced not to take any new political advertisement seven days prior to the US Presidential elections 2020 that are scheduled to be conducted on November 3rd. However, the tech giant will allow the existing political ads to be promoted and target audience in the region. Facebook’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has announced regarding this measure on US Presidential elections 2020 in a post on Facebook.
New terms and conditions by Facebook
According to Zuckerberg, this measure is an essential requirement as he is worried about the divisions in the country that might lead to civil unrest. He also added that Facebook would label all posts of participating candidates of US Presidential elections 2020 that might declare their victory before the official counting results are announced. This measure is being implemented by this social media platform as Facebook has previously faced intense criticism for allowing political advertisements to micro-target individuals on its platform, by which only small specific communities are seeing specific advertisements instead of being shown and debated by large scale population.
The Mozilla Foundation has stated that it has become very easy for politicians and their campaigners to post fiction information posed as facts and avoid any sort of checking until it is too late, which was particularly due to the announcement made by Facebook that political advertisement that has been posted by a candidate of the US Presidential elections 2020 will not be fact-checked. These new measures by Facebook serve as a pattern regarding the handling of upcoming elections in the future across the world.
Divided country
According to current United States President Donald Trump, the upcoming US Presidential elections 2020 in November could possibly be rigged due to voter scam. However, no evidence has been found in the previous polls that might suggest any sort of possible fraud in this year’s election. Mark Zuckerberg stated that the upcoming presidential elections in November would not go to be like the previous ones. This is because the country is divided into several factions, and the finalized results of the US Presidential elections 2020 might take several days or even weeks, which might amplify the possibility of public turbulence across the nation.
Due to the increasing issue of the spread of false news and deliberate rumors on social media platform Facebook, the company has made a new set of terms and conditions that could be applicable for all users from the first week of October 2020. The measures that are in relation with the upcoming US Presidential elections 2020 includes:
- Refusal of new political advertisements will be done for seven days prior to Election Day.
- All posts that claim the individuals taking part in the elections will acquire COVID-19 will be immediately removed.
- All posts will be labeled that contain information that might delegitimize the official finalized result of the US Presidential elections 2020.
- All posts will be labeled that will be posted by election candidates claimed to have won the elections before official results are announced.
It has also been announced by Mark Zuckerberg that Facebook has strong-armed their enforcement policies against engagements known to extend conspiracy theories. Due to this measure, thousands of groups connected will these movements had already been removed from the platform. But this measure attracted disapproval.
The new measures regarding the US Presidential elections 2020 will allow previously posted advertisements to run until the day of the election, while no new ad will allow being posted seven days before the election to prevent any issues. All campaigns will construct and run thousands of ingenious ads in the days before discontinue, which will then be allowed to run in the final week.
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