Facebook will not allow advertisements that seek to delegitimise the results of the United States Presidential Elections 2020.
The social media giant’s policy related to such ads will be enforced on Facebook as well as Instagram.
The policy change was announced by Facebook’s Director of Product Management Rob Leathern.
Leathern took to Twitter to detail the new policy.
“As we get closer to Election Day we want to provide further clarity on policies we recently announced. Last week we said we’d prohibit ads that make premature declarations of victory. We also won’t allow ads with content that seeks to delegitimize the outcome of an election,” he tweeted.
“For example, this would include calling a method of voting inherently fraudulent or corrupt, or using isolated incidents of voter fraud to delegitimize the result of an election. These changes apply to ads across Facebook and Instagram, and are effective immediately,” he added.
Facebook last week had said that it will reject political ads claiming that a particular candidate has won the US Presidential Elections 2020 before the final results are tabulated, according to a report by Fast Company. This was especially important owing to in-mail voting amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Winners have been projected by midnight in the past. However, in-mail voting will affect these projections as per the report.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg last month said that the platform will be posting an information label on content that “seeks to de-legitimise the outcome of the election or discuss the legitimacy of voting methods.”
Other tech giants including Google and Twitter have also updated their policies related to the US elections. Google, for instance, will block election ads across its platforms after the polls close on November 3, The Axios reported.
Twitter plans to either remove or attach a warning label on content claiming victory of a particular candidate prior to election results being announced.