Facebook plans to limits political ads in the United States due to the coming elections.

Facebook plans to limits political ads in the United States due to the coming elections.

 

Facebook plans to block new advertising the week before the presidential election — the first time the company has taken action to limit political advertising in the United States, the company said Thursday.

The move to limit ads, part of a spate of election-related announcements, is an attempt to combat efforts to suppress voting and reduce misinformation that is expected to flood social networks as Election Day draws near.

The company also said that it would label posts by any candidate or campaign that tries to declare victory before the final results are in, directing people to the official results from Reuters. It will do the same for any posts that try to delegitimize the outcome of the election — for example, a claim that voting by mail could lead to fraud. It has also started to limit users’ ability to forward articles on its Messenger platform to large groups of people.

The US elections are just two months away, and with Covid-19 affecting communities across the country, I’m concerned about the challenges people could face when voting,” Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a post Thursday morning. “I’m also worried that with our nation so divided and election results potentially taking days or even weeks to be finalized, there could be an increased risk of civil unrest across the country. This election is not going to be business as usual. We all have a responsibility to protect our democracy.”

But the intense political stakes for the company were immediately underscored Thursday morning, as the Trump campaign blasted the company for its new policies.

“In the last seven days of the most important election in our history, President Trump will be banned from defending himself on the largest platform in America,” said Samantha Zager, the campaign’s deputy national press secretary. “When millions of voters will be making their decisions, the President will be silenced by the Silicon Valley Mafia, who will at the same time allow corporate media to run their biased ads to swing voters in key states.”

The move announced Thursday by Facebook does not ban the president, who has nearly 31 million followers on the social network.