Facebook announces measures to deal with hate speech, misinformation and voter suppression

Social media giant Facebook on Friday, June 26 anunced new measures and a change in its policy to deal with hate speech and voter suppression in le up to 2020 US Presidential elections. Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg anunced four major changes to policy of world's biggest social networking platform.

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Facebook tweaks policies 

Facebook and Zuckerberg have been criticised for t take effective action against hate speech, racist posts, paid political vertisements with hyper targetting users, etc. Facebook has also been pulled up after Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm based in London, used user data to target voters during 2016 US Presidential elections.

four changes anunced by Facebook include Providing Authoritative Information on Voting During Pandemic, ditional Steps to Fight Voter Suppression, Creating a Higher Standard for Hateful Content in s, and Labeling Newsworthy Content. 

To fight voter suppression, firm said, "During a pandemic when people may be afraid of going to polls, sharing authoritative information on voting by mail will be especially important. We'll be showing Voting Information Center at top of Facebook and Instagram apps over coming months." This will allow voters to discuss information around voting and will offer links to discuss issue.

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Zuckerberg also anunced that Election Operations Center will work on removing false claims about polling conditions in 72 hours leing into election day. Facebook will also ban posts that make false claims saying ICE nts checking for immigration papers at polling places, which is a tactic used to discour voting. Posts that highlight information regarding interference of voters will also be removed.

To stop and control spre of hateful vertisements on Facebook, site will pull down posts that target people from a specific race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, caste, sexual orientation, identity or immigration status and those that could be a threat to physical safety, health or survival of ors.

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new policies will also protect immigrants, migrants, refugees and asylum seekers from vertisements 'suggesting se groups are inferior or expressing contempt, dismissal or disgust directed at m.'

Finally, Facebook anunced that it will be label certain items for users to share and condemn in order to point out misinformation that is being shared.

Zuckerberg anunced se measures on a day when Unilever joined an increasing number of brands that are pulling vertisements from social media giant for it's a failure to control hate speech and t being effective in dealing with racist vertisements and posts from news outlets, users and politicians.

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In a statement, Unilever said, "We have decided that starting w through at least end of year, we will t run brand vertising in social media newsfeed platforms Facebook, Instagram and Twitter in US continuing to vertise on se platforms at this time would t d value to people and society.” 

Multiple civil rights and vocacy groups have also called for a boycott Facebook, including Anti-Defamation League, NAACP, Sleeping Giants, Color Of Change, Free Press, and Common Sense. 

Recently, Facebook employees also criticised leership for t taking eugh actions and led a virtual “walkout” to protest company’s decision over t to touch President Trump's posts in which he me controversial comments on protestors leing Black Lives Matter movement. 

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