Facebook to Ban New Political Ads Week Prior to November Election

Breaking news this morning from Mark Zuckerberg who announced he’s cracking down on potential election misinformation. Facebook will block new political ads in the week leading up to the election. The tech CEO said “it’s important that campaigns can run get out the vote campaigns” but fears a few days is not enough time to properly fact-check new claims. The restrictions will be lifted the day after the election. However, Zuckerberg intends to apply “contextual labels” to any candidate’s post who prematurely claims victory before votes are counted. Other new rules include strong enforcement of their current policies, banning posts that use Covid-19 as a threat to discourage voting, labeling misleading posts about the election and voting, limiting the amount of people you can shares posts with over messenger, and more. This comes following criticism from the public in recent weeks who believe the company is not doing enough in terms of vetting false or misleading political ads.