Johannesburg - As the presidential race between US president Donald Trump and the opposition candidate Joe Biden intensifies, the world’s leading social media network Facebook announces that it will put a stop to content that seeks to intimidate voters, including posts that encourage people to engage in unauthorised poll watching.
Users will get notifications that direct them to accurate election results after the polls close. The elections are set to take place on November 3.
"We believe we have done more than any other company over the past four years to help secure the integrity of elections," said Facebook's Vice President of Integrity, Guy Rosen, during a press conference Wednesday. Rosen said the company has been planning for different scenarios that might happen during the presidential election.
According to CNET, Facebook will let users know via notification that the votes are still being counted and a winner hasn't been declared yet. If a candidate contests the results of the election, Facebook will show the name of the winner in the notifications displayed on the main social network and on Instagram. Posts from presidential candidates will also be labeled with a notice that displays the winner's name and a link to the Voting Information Center.
In September, Facebook announced that it will not allow new political ads in the final week of the campaign.
“We're going to block new political and issue ads during the final week of the campaign. It's important that campaigns can run and get out the vote campaigns, and I generally believe the best antidote to bad speech is more speech, but in the final days of an election there may not be enough time to contest new claims. So in the week before the election, we won't accept new political or issue ads”, Facebook CEO Mark Zukerberg stated in a post.
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