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Facebook plans to boost voter turnout and transparency in US elections Facebook unveils plans to boost voter turnout in US elections
(about 2 hours later)
Details on how to vote will be featured prominently, and people will be allowed to opt out of seeing paid political ads Firm aims to double number of registered voters of previous drives and prevent ‘malicious’ interference
Facebook is launching a widespread effort to boost US voter turnout and provide information about the electoral process just as it doubles down on its policy allowing politicians like President Donald Trump to post false information on the same subject. Facebook will launch “the largest voting information effort in US history” in the run-up to November’s general election, the company has said, aiming to help 4 million Americans register to vote with a new voting information centre.
The social media giant is launching a Voting Information Centre on Facebook and Instagram that will include details on registering to vote, polling places and voting by mail. That goal, spread across Facebook, Instagram and Messenger, is double the number of voters registered as a result of its previous drives, in the 2016 and 2018 elections. The company is also hoping it can prevent a repeat of the foreign interference that plagued the last US presidential election.
It will draw the information from state election officials and local election authorities. “We’ve built some of the most advanced systems in the world to combat election interference,” said Naomi Gleit, Facebook’s vice-president of product management and social impact. “The Voting Information Center will be another line of defence. By getting clear, accurate and authoritative information to people, we reduce the effectiveness of malicious networks that might try to take advantage of uncertainty and interfere with the election.”
The information hub, which will be prominently displayed on Facebook news feeds and on Instagram later in the summer is similar to the coronavirus information centre the company launched earlier this year in an attempt to elevate facts and authoritative sources of information on Covid-19. Facebook is also making an unprecedented concession to those worried about the effect of targeted political advertising on the site. The company will continue to take such ads, and allow advertisers to use all its standard targeting tools, but individual users will now be able to turn off all social issue, electoral and political ads, removing them wholesale from Facebook products.
Facebook and its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, continue to face criticism for not removing or labelling posts by Trump that spread misinformation about voting by mail and, many have argued, encouraged violence against protesters. Facebook will also finally show who paid for a political ad for even after it has been shared by another user, and will begin tracking ad spend on a candidate-by-candidate basis, to “help you understand how much advertisers and candidates are spending to reach voters”.
“I know many people are upset that we’ve left the president’s posts up, but our position is that we should enable as much expression as possible unless it will cause imminent risk of specific harms or dangers spelled out in clear policies,” Zuckerberg wrote earlier this month. When it comes to less forthright attempts to influence the vote, Facebook hopes its moderation team will help. Since 2016, the company says, it has tripled the number of people working on “security and safety issues”. The company’s experience of “more than 200 elections since 2017” will also help, Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice-president for global affairs and communications, wrote in a comment piece for the Telegraph.
In a USA Today opinion piece Tuesday, Zuckerberg reaffirmed that position. Facebook’s primary goal is to encourage people to vote, says founder Mark Zuckerberg. “I believe Facebook has a responsibility not just to prevent voter suppression – which disproportionately targets people of colour – but also to actively support well-informed voter engagement, registration and turnout,” he wrote in USA Today on Wednesday.
“Ultimately, I believe the best way to hold politicians accountable is through voting, and I believe we should trust voters to make judgments for themselves,” he wrote. The drive comes as Facebook has suffered unprecedented internal turmoil over its decision not to take down a Donald Trump post that many of its own employees believed to be inciting violence. Without referring directly to the controversy, Zuckerberg argued that that decision too showed the company’s commitment to electoral freedom.
“That’s why I think we should maintain as open a platform as possible, accompanied by ambitious efforts to boost voter participation.” “Free expression is part of the messy process of democracy, and we take our responsibility to protect it incredibly seriously,” he wrote.
Facebook‘s free speech stance may have more to do with not wanting to alienate Trump and his supporters while keeping its business options open, critics suggest. “Everyone wants to see politicians held accountable for what they say – and I know many people want us to moderate and remove more of their content. We have rules against speech that will cause imminent physical harm or suppress voting, and no one is exempt from them. But accountability only works if we can see what those seeking our votes are saying, even if we viscerally dislike what they say.”
Dipayan Ghosh, co-director of the Platform Accountability Project at Harvard Kennedy School, said Facebook “doesn’t want to tick off a whole swath of people who really believe the president and appreciate” his words. The voting information centre will appear at the top of the Facebook and Instagram feeds, starting this summer, and will contain guidance on how to vote, including advice on registration, information on postal voting, help on the process of voting in person, and posts from local election authorities with announcements about any changes to the process.
In addition to the voting hub, Facebook will also now let people turn off political and social issue advertisements that display the “paid for by” designation, meaning the ad was paid for by a politician or political entity.
The company announced this option in January but it goes into effect now.
Sarah Schiff, product manager who works on ads, cautioned that Facebook‘s systems “aren’t perfect” and said she encourages users to report “paid for by” ads they see if they have chosen not to see them.