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Facebook to limit political advertisements before US election

The company said on Thursday it will restrict new political advertisements in the week before the election and remove posts that convey misinformation about COVID-19 and voting.

Facebook and other social media companies are being scrutinised over how they handle misinformation, given issues with President Donald Trump and other candidates posting false information andRussia's continuing attemptsto interfere in US politics.

Facebook has long been criticised for not fact-checking political ads or limiting how they can be targeted at small groups of people.

In July, Trump refused to publicly commit to accepting the results of the upcoming election, as he scoffed at polls that showed him lagging behind Democratic rival Joe Biden.

Trump has also made false claims that the increased use of mail-in voting because of the coronavirus pandemic allows for voter fraud.

Asked in an interview on CBS News aired on Thursday if he had personally engaged with Trump on his posts about voting, Zuckerberg said he did not think he had recently.

Under the new measures, Facebook says it will prohibit politicians and campaigns from running new election advertisements in the week before the election.

Posts with obvious misinformation on voting policies and the coronavirus pandemic will also be removed, the company said.

The company will also work with the Reuters news agency to provide official election results and make the information available both on its platform and with push notifications.

Facebook had previously drawn criticism for its advertisement policy, which cited freedom of expression as the reason for letting politicians like Trump post false information about voting.

Original article
Author: Aljazeera

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