SAN FRANCISCO – Over the past few weeks, Facebook’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and his lieutenants have seen the presidency with a growing sense of caution.
Officials are meeting to discuss President Trump’s misrepresentation of whether he will accept a peaceful transfer of power if he loses the election. They call Mr. Trump the proud boys, the far-right group that supports violence, “stand back and stand.” And they have spoken to civil rights groups, who have privately said the company needs to do more because election day could be in chaos.
This has led to new actions. On Wednesday, Facebook said it would take more preventive measures to prevent political candidates from manipulating the election result and manipulating its outcome. The company now plans to ban all political and issue-based advertising after the polls close on November 3 for a set period. And he says he puts notifications at the top of the news feed informing people that no winner has been decided until the winner is announced by the news winners.
“This is going to be a very unique election,” Guy Rose, Facebook’s vice president of integrity, told reporters on Wednesday.
Facebook is doing more to protect its platform after launching election misinformation and anti-interference measures on its site just last month. At the time, Facebook said it planned to ban new political ads for a period of one week before election day, and would take swift action against posts trying to dissuade people from voting. Mr Zuckerberg also said that Facebook would not make any other changes until the official election results came out.
But the additional measures reflect a sense of crisis about the election, as Mr. Trump and his opponent, Joseph R. The pro-Trump conspiracy movement, any group, page or Instagram account openly identified with Quennon.
For years, Facebook has been trying to avoid a second election fiasco in 2016, when it was used by Russian administrators to spread ambiguity and destabilize American voters. Mr Zuckerberg has since spent billions of dollars recruiting new staff for the company’s “integrity” and security departments, who have identified the interference. He said the amount spent on securing Facebook exceeded its total revenue by about કુલ 5.1 billion during its first year as a public company in 2012.
“We believe we have done more than any other company in the last four years to protect the integrity of the election.”
Yet how successful the efforts are is questionable. The company has continued to search for and keep down foreign intervention campaigns, most recently three weeks ago involving three Russian disinformation networks.
Domestic misinformation has also become mushroom, as Facebook has said it will not make police speeches for the veracity of politicians and other prominent figures. Mr Zuckerberg did not step down as he endorsed the candid speech because Mr Trump had posted lies and misleading comments on the site.
For next month’s election, Facebook has released about 80 views – what tech and security personnel call a “red teaming” exercise – to see what could go wrong and to protect against the situation. It also updated last month’s statements of elected officials and policies to keep certain types of threats illegal by well-organized groups of change.
But weeks after Mr. Trump refused to say he would accept the election result, while also instructing his supporters to “watch” the vote, Facebook decided to take defensive measures.
Asked why the company now operates, Facebook officials said they “continue to evaluate and plan different scenarios” with the election.
The open ban on political ads is significant after Facebook resisted a call to remove the ads for months. Last month, the company said it would stop accepting new political ads in the week before election day, so existing political ads would continue to circulate. New political announcements may resume after election day. Mr Zuckerberg said the ads give lesser-known politicians the ability to promote themselves, and removing those ads could hurt their chances of expanding their support base.
Facebook also said it relies on a mix of news outlets, including Reuters and The Associated Press, to determine if the candidate has won the presidency. Until those news organizations call the race, Facebook said it would give instructions in the news feed to say no candidate has won. The company said it was losing out on what it would do last month, when it announced that it would attach labels to posts that redirect users to Reuters if Mr Trump or his supporters falsely claimed an early victory.
To curb potential intimidation on ballot boxes, Facebook also plans to remove posts asking people to join the poll, saying “when those calls use military language or indicate that the goal is to intimidate, control or hold elections To demonstrate power over officers. Or voters. ”
Mr. Trump and others have talked about watching the poll in recent weeks. In a discussion with Mr. Biden last week, Mr. Trump urged his supporters to “go to the polls and watch carefully.”
Facebook has been criticized for unequally removing posts and enforcing its policies against toxic content, saying it has already taken down many posts where people were trying to interfere with the vote. Between March and September, it removed more than 120,000 posts from Facebook and Instagram in the United States because the messages violated its voter interference policy.
The company said it would not be ashamed to remove more posts as elections approach. On Tuesday, he dropped a post from Mr. Trump where he falsely claimed the flu was more deadly than the coronavirus.
“I want to underscore the issue that we remove it regardless of who posts this content,” said Monica Bickert, Facebook’s head of global policy management. “That includes the president.”
