Facebook will start adding new labels and information to posts about voting and the election, as it attempts to tackle misinformation and other issues ahead of November.
The changes are intended both to encourage people to vote and to ensure they do so with reliable information, combatting misleading stories about the election. Social networks have already rushed to stop the spread of false stories about issues such as mail-in voting which many US citizens will be doing for the first time including adding notes to posts by Donald Trump.
The newly introduced tools include a hub for information on voting that borrows from Facebook's efforts to stop false information around coronavirus.
The Covid-19 hub has been seen by billions, Facebook has said, and the new voting tools will take largely the same form.
Despite its efforts, Facebook continues to face widespread criticism around how it handles misinformation around elections and other matters. The company has generally refused to fact-check ads by politicians, for instance, and a two-year audit of its civil rights practices faulted the company for leaving U.S.
The effectiveness of such labels will depend on how well Facebook's artificial intelligence system identifies the posts that really need them, said Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for Civic Media.
Facebook expects the voter hub to reach at least 160 million people in the U.S., said Emily Dalton Smith, who serves as head of social impact at the company.
Other tech companies, Twitter and Google, which owns YouTube, have undertaken similar efforts around the November election.
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