Published 03:24 IST, June 27th 2020
Facebook announces measures to deal with hate speech, misinformation and voter suppression
Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced four major changes to the policy of the world's biggest social networking site in the light of Nov Polls.
Social media giant Facebook on Friday, June 26 announced new measures and a change in its policy to deal with hate speech and voter suppression in the lead up to the 2020 US Presidential elections. Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced four major changes to the policy of the world's biggest social networking platform.
Facebook tweaks policies
Facebook and Zuckerberg have been criticised for not take effective action against hate speech, racist posts, paid political advertisements 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 the 2016 US Presidential elections.
The four changes announced by Facebook include Providing Authoritative Information on Voting During the Pandemic, Additional Steps to Fight Voter Suppression, Creating a Higher Standard for Hateful Content in Ads, and Labeling Newsworthy Content.
To fight voter suppression, the 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 the Voting Information Center at the top of the Facebook and Instagram apps over the coming months." This will allow voters to discuss information around voting and will offer links to discuss the issue.
Zuckerberg also announced that Election Operations Center will work on removing false claims about polling conditions in the 72 hours leading into election day. Facebook will also ban posts that make false claims saying ICE agents checking for immigration papers at polling places, which is a tactic used to discourage voting. Posts that highlight information regarding interference of voters will also be removed.
To stop and control the spread of hateful advertisements on Facebook, the site will pull down posts that target people from a specific race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, caste, sexual orientation, gender identity or immigration status and those that could be a threat to the physical safety, health or survival of others.
The new policies will also protect immigrants, migrants, refugees and asylum seekers from advertisements 'suggesting these groups are inferior or expressing contempt, dismissal or disgust directed at them.'
Finally, Facebook announced that it will be label certain items for users to share and condemn in order to point out the misinformation that is being shared.
Zuckerberg announced these measures on a day when Unilever joined an increasing number of brands that are pulling advertisements from the social media giant for it's a failure to control hate speech and not being effective in dealing with racist advertisements and posts from news outlets, users and politicians.
In a statement, Unilever said, "We have decided that starting now through at least the end of the year, we will not run brand advertising in social media newsfeed platforms Facebook, Instagram and Twitter in the US continuing to advertise on these platforms at this time would not add value to people and society.”
Multiple civil rights and advocacy groups have also called for a boycott Facebook, including the Anti-Defamation League, NAACP, Sleeping Giants, Color Of Change, Free Press, and Common Sense.
Recently, Facebook employees also criticised the leadership for not taking enough actions and led a virtual “walkout” to protest the company’s decision over not to touch President Trump's posts in which he made controversial comments on the protestors leading the Black Lives Matter movement.
Updated 03:24 IST, June 27th 2020