Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated that the company has been taking action against the increasing threats of possible civil unrest.
Zuckerberg said that he is disturbed by the possibility of having civil unrest corresponding to the US Presidential Election. According to him, the country is divided, and the election results might cause a civil disturbance. And with this, Facebook plans to go beyond what they’ve done in the past to prevent the situation.
The company responded to the threats, including guiding users to register to vote and giving precise election information to users. Facebook will also ban political ads a week before the election and ads that’ll try to delegitimize election results.
They added that Facebook would outlaw inappropriate content like groups engrossed in the conspiracy theories of QAnon and holocaust denialism. Zuckerberg also noted that the actions aren’t a shift to their philosophy or support of free expression, but a reflection of risks.
Furthermore, Facebook is not the only company that’s concerned with this issue. On Thursday, Walmart took out their displayed guns and ammo from the sales floor due to civil unrest incidents in some US parts.
Facebook’s Technical Errors Affect Political Ads
On Thursday, Facebook released an update acknowledging the technical errors in their system, unseemly pausing political ads from parties.
According to the company, Facebook regrets any interference in the distribution of the ads at the moment. These errors came from the change of policy on Facebook, which is to ban new political ads a week before the election.
In early September, this policy change was already announced by the company. They added that some advertisers didn’t understand the instructions Facebook gave, which results in pausing of their ads.
Facebook said that situation affects the ads from a political range up to presidential campaigns. It made them do updates to enable the advertisements that have been affected. The company added that there was no ad paused caused by any partisan.
Rob Flaherty, digital director of Biden’s campaign, complained on Twitter about an issue associated with campaign ads. He said that Trump’s ads that violated were still allowed in running while their campaign got flagged in his tweet. He even retweeted it with a quote, “still haven’t fixed this or explained it btw.”
➡ Looking to get featured on Future Sharks?
