Facebook has
recently announced that posts from all presidential candidates and
federally-elected officials that mention voting or ballots will have new
labels that include the “Get Voting Information” CTA. Clicking the CTA will
take users to a page on the USA.gov
website that has all the different questions and answers regarding the
voting procedure. Furthermore, the labels will be there whether the posts contain
misinformation or not.
The announcement was
made by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a live-stream.
This new update is a major policy shift at Facebook, considering that it has always refused to add labels or warnings of any sort to posts made by politicians.
On the other hand,
back in May, Twitter faced some trouble with US President Donald Trump after it
added a warning label to his tweets. Twitter found that Trump’s comments on
mail-in voting could be misleading people regarding the functions of the mail-in
process, hence reducing voter participation. Mark Zuckerberg called out Twitter
on its approach the next day, pointing out that social media platform companies
needn’t be “the arbiters of truth”.
Since Zuckerberg’s
criticism, Facebook has been facing backlash over its approach in this respect.
Therefore, the current alter in Facebook’s approach shows that Zuckerberg is
paying attention to the community’s remarks, and is ready to evolve the company’s
approach to meet their expectations.
Facebook is,
however, still persistent in its decision to not fact-check political ads, but
with the current small change in its policy, one can say that it is at least
trying to broaden its approach.
The update still
needs to be debated over regarding its pros and cons. At least, users at
Facebook are being well-informed about voting claims now. Moreover, Facebook is
also aiming to increase voter participation by encouraging Americans to
participate in the November poll via its Voting Information Centre push in the
news feed.
