On Thursday, Facebook Inc said that it will ban any ads that aim to limit participation in next year’s U.S. census, which officials and lawmakers fear could be targeted by disinformation aiming to disrupt the count. The move from Facebook came after it has come under fire for allowing politicians to run misleading advertisements.
Facebook Bans All Ads That Aim to Limit U.S.
The census is used to determine each state’s representation in the U.S. Congress and to guide the allocation of as much as $1.5 trillion a year in federal funds.
Facebook also said in a blog post on Thursday that it will remove certain misleading content about the census, such as when and how to participate and consequences such as arrests or that an individual’s census information would be shared with another government agency which is against federal law. Meanwhile, other incorrect information will be eligible for fact-checking.
Earlier in September this year, a meme spread on Facebook that falsely claimed robbers were accessing homes by posing as government workers seeking census information. While it was disproved by fact-checkers, it was not removed, in line with Facebook’s general fact-checking policies.
Facebook also said that it would prohibit ads that “portray census participation as useless or meaningless or advise people not to participate in the census.”
Although Facebook exempts politicians’ ads from fact-checking, however, the company also said that the politicians would not be allowed to run ads or post content that conflicts with its census policies.
According to the Facebook officials the posts “earnestly expressing fear about the census,” will be allowed, however, the posts will be monitored for reach and might have extra context added.
The census, which takes place once a decade, is expected to be largely filled out online for the first time in 2020.
Meanwhile, the census experts have expressed concern for months that Facebook was not taking seriously the disinformation threat and would not be ready to combat it. Earlier in March this year, the Census Bureau had asked Alphabet Inc’s Google, Twitter and Facebook to help it fend off “fake news” campaigns.
As per the census officials, Facebook presentations have lacked detail, and at times seemed more focused on promoting its own platform for ads. As three sources were directly involved in countering disinformation around the census from the non-profit, academic and private sectors.
Vanita Gupta, president of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights said, “It appears Facebook has finally listened. The census and our elections demand extreme vigilance – there are no do-overs.”
Rashad Robinson, president of civil rights group Color of Change, said the policy reflected many of the organization’s demands but it was “only as good as its enforcement and transparency, which, to be clear, is an area that Facebook has failed in the past.”
Meanwhile, Twitter currently bans false or misleading information about how to participate in civic events. Also, Google has recently updated its policies here around census-related deception, including explicitly banning ads featuring incorrect information about how to participate.
