Do everything to avoid being accused again of contributing to the outcome of an election.
Facebook is stepping up initiatives to toughen its rules in the run-up to the US presidential election on November 3.
After announcing in September that all political advertising would be banned the week before the vote, the social network said on Wednesday that it will also be banned, on election night and for an indefinite period of time, to do election advertising .
In other words, neither side will be able to claim victory.
However, the name of the winner risks being announced particularly late this year because of the health context and the massively used postal vote.
As long as the results are not official or announced by the media, a notification will appear at the top of the news feeds to remind them.
"Facebook is acting very late"
Facebook, which has more than 200 million users in the United States, has also publicly encouraged its employees to volunteer to help out at polling stations.
And the platform now plans to remove calls "made in military terms or when they suggest the idea of intimidating or controlling election officials or voters."
What strikes the digital specialist Tristan Mendès France is the short time (a few weeks) between all these announcements and the ballot.
“Facebook is acting very late when Twitter had already announced several months ago to ban political advertising.
We feel that they are under very significant social and political pressure, with more and more elected officials sounding the alarm, ”he points out.
Among the possible explanations for this "delay", the associate lecturer at the University of Paris-Diderot cites, in particular, the "libertarian philosophy" of Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg and the fact that advertising constitutes the "nuclear heart" »Of the activity and business of the platform.
An executive of the social network, Andrew Bosworth, admitted in December 2019 that Facebook had contributed to the election of the current American president in 2016. “He was elected because he led the best advertising campaign on the Internet that I have ever seen. have never seen.
Full stop, ”he wrote in a long message sent to his colleges before being made public.
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Today, 35,000 people are currently in charge of moderation of content, in support of algorithms based on artificial intelligence.
120,000 Facebook or Instagram posts (which belong to the same group) have already been deleted.
Trump's Facebook post deleted
These employees are also in charge of posting warnings on misleading or even false content.
On Tuesday, Facebook even deleted a message posted by Donald Trump claiming that, "in most populations, Covid-19 is much less fatal than the flu".
At the same time, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign has lashed out at "the Silicon Valley mafia" who "will silence the president when millions of voters make their decisions," reports The New York Times.
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To look good and not only be in the ban or censorship, Facebook also announced at the end of September the establishment of a "supervisory board".
This is responsible for monitoring the moderation decisions taken by the social network and any citizen can refer to it.
In addition, an information center on the elections has been put online, making it possible to verify that one is indeed registered on the electoral rolls or to obtain information on the methods of the vote.
“We believe that we have done more than any other company over the past four years to help ensure the integrity of the election,” said Guy Rosen, one of the group's vice-presidents.
“Facebook is cautious about getting involved in politics, for fear of being seen as an actor.
It's an extremely sulphurous material for him, ”points out Tristan Mendès France.
Moreover, even if it manages to block political propaganda, the social network risks being overwhelmed in the days preceding and especially following the day of the American election.
“Facebook wants to prevent people from saying 'we won, we won'.
But it will be the ground for an absolutely total partisan and ideological war and it will not be able to prevent all the comments of the type: 'if Trump wins, it's the apocalypse' ”, judges the specialist.
In the worst case scenario, especially in the event of post-election violence, Facebook has already warned that it could “reduce the circulation of content”.
