Facebook Taking Steps To Combat Spread Of Misinformation In November Election

Facebook released a series of new content regulations Thursday designed to prevent "confusion, violence and unrest" in the leadup to the presidential election, outlining measures to combat misinformation in a press release and social media post.

“I'm concerned about the challenges people could face when voting. I'm also worried that with our nation so divided and election results potentially taking days or even weeks to be finalized, there could be an increased risk of civil unrest across the country. This election is not going to be business as usual,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a post.

Facebook said it plans to increase its content oversight on posts that address issues such as Covid-19, voting, and the legitimacy of elections. This is a step the social media giant has previously been reluctant to take, citing freedom of speech as a reason to allow misleading or false political ads on their platform.

Among the changes, Facebook will:

• Have a banner directing users to information on voting and voter registration sites from now until the election.
• Not allow new ads to be run in the week before the election. Previously uploaded ads can still be run.
• Ramp up efforts to remove false or misleading information about voting.
• Limit Messenger forwarding to five people per message to prevent the spread of mass misinformation.
• Expand the definition of what it counts as misinformation and remove, specifically around the topic of voting
• Remove threads that use the threat of Covid-19 to discourage voting
• Seek to inform users of official election results, and give facts about election legitimacy. Posts seeking to delegitimize the election will be tagged with a link to an election center.
• Continue and expand its efforts to combat conspiracy networks, militias, and other groups that “organize violence or civil unrest.”

These steps represent a marked departure from the company's previous stance, as Zuckerberg noted in the announcement, saying, “I generally believe the best antidote to bad speech is more speech, but in the final days of an election there may not be enough time to contest new [misinformation.]”

Zuckerberg also touched on the thread of coordinated misinformation networks, something Facebook has been increasingly aware of since Russian interference in the 2016 election. Last month another misinformation page operating out of Russia was caught in the early stages of creating a false news source.

The announcement states that Facebook does not intend to make further rule changes between now and the election.