Facebook tightens political ad bans as U.S. election nears

Facebook Inc. onWednesday banned ads on its flagship website and Instagram photoand video sharing service that claim widespread voting fraud,suggest U.S. election results would be invalid, or which attackany method of voting.

The company announced the new rules in a blog post, addingto earlier restrictions on premature claims of election victory.

The move came a day after U.S. President Donald Trump usedthe first televised debate with Democratic challenger Joe Bidento amplify his baseless claims that the Nov. 3 presidentialelection will be "rigged."

Trump has been especially critical of mail-in ballots, andhascited a number of small, unrelated incidents to argue thatfraud was already happening at scale.

Facebook has been under fire for refusing to fact-checkpolitical ads more broadly and for rampant organicmisinformation.

Citing hate speech rules, it also moved Wednesday to removeTrump campaign ads suggesting that immigrants could be asignificant source of coronavirus infections.

WATCH | Facebookplan to prevent misinformation around U.S. election criticized:

Facebooks plan to prevent misinformation around U.S. election draws criticism

4 years ago

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Facebook has outlined the steps its taking to protect the integrity of the U.S. election. It will remove ads promoting voter fraud, and will not allow new political ads in the week leading up to the election, but there are concerns the plans dont go far enough.

Facebook said the new election ad prohibition would includethose that "portray voting or census participation asuseless/meaningless" or that "delegitimize any lawful method orprocess of voting or voting tabulation ... as illegal,inherently fraudulent or corrupt."

Facebook also cited ads that call an election fraudulent orcorrupt because the result was unclear on election night orbecause ballots received afterward were still being counted.

QAnon banned from platform

The company added that as of Sept. 29, it has banned adsthat "praise, support or represent militarized social movementsand QAnon" from its platform.

QAnon followers espouse an intertwined series of beliefs,based on anonymous web postings from "Q," who claims to haveinsider knowledge of the Trump administration.

Starting Wednesday, Facebook will direct people to crediblechild safety resources when they search for certain child safetyhashtags, as QAnon supporters are increasingly using the issueand hashtags such as #savethechildren to recruit, the socialmedia company said in a blog post.