San Francisco, Aug 17 : Meta (formerly Facebook) has announced that it will block new social, electoral, and political ads one week prior to the vote in US midterm elections in November.Ads that were previously run prior to the restriction time will be permitted to run for this period.
“To make it easier that was used in the previous cycle, any changes that concern creative placement, targeting, or optimization won’t be allowed,” Nick Clegg, President, Global Affairs, said in an announcement.
The period of restriction will be lifted the day following the election, and “we don’t have plans to prolong it,” he said late on Tuesday.
Meta reported that hundreds of people from forty teams are in charge of midterm polls, and that it invested around $5 billion on security and safety this year.
The company stated that it will not permit advertisements or posts that misrepresent important information regarding the voting process including the date, time , and ways of voting.
“We will not accept ads that encourage people to not vote or putting in doubt the validity of the election that is coming up,” said Clegg.
The company also said that it will also invest in proactive threat detection as well as is expanding our policies to combat coordinated threats and harassment of violence directed at election officials as well as poll workers.
Local and state elections officials continue to utilize Voting Alerts via Facebook to provide the most up-to-date information on registering and voting to those in their respective communities.
“This year, we’ll also be showing in-Feed notifications about elections in another different language than English in the event that we believe the second language is more widely comprehended,” said Meta.
“While certain of the problems in 2020 were unique, we are again ready to address material that questions the legitimacy of the election through the application of labels that link people with credible information” Clegg added.
Facebook had suspended advertisements for political causes for the first time on November 4 2020.
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