Fotomontasje: Document.no (Trump: stillbilde fra video, Biden: Reuters/Scanpix)

Facebook sier at de vil stanse politiske annonser om det amerikanske presidentvalget en uke før selve valget. Mark Zuckerberg advarer mot «en økt risiko av sivile uroligheter over hele landet». I en lang melding på Facebook lister Zuckerberg opp hva Facebook vil tillate før og under valget.

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. 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.

Facebook kjører for tiden en kampanje for å få 4 millioner amerikanere til å registrere seg for å stemme i valget. Zuckerberg og kone Priscilla har donert 300 millioner dollar til nøytrale organisasjoner (Doc. uthevelse) som skal styrke infrastrukturen for stemmeavgivning, skriver han.

In just three days, we already drove almost 24 million clicks to voter registration websites. Priscilla and I have also personally donated $300 million to non-partisan organizations supporting states and local counties in strengthening our voting infrastructure.

Men en uke før valget stanser Facebook alle annonser, fordi det ikke blir nok tid til å kontre argumenter, sier han.

We’re going to block new political and issue ads during the final week of the campaign. It’s important that campaigns can run 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 har allerede begynt å fjerne det de beskriver som feilaktig informasjon om stemmeavgivning.

We’re going to extend our work with election officials to remove misinformation about voting. We already committed to partnering with state election authorities to identify and remove false claims about polling conditions in the last 72 hours of the campaign, but given that this election will include large amounts of early voting, we’re extending that period to begin now and continue through the election until we have a clear result. We’ve already consulted with state election officials on whether certain voting claims are accurate.

Mark Zuckerberg refererer til QAnon som et konspiratorisk nettverk som kan brukes til å organisere vold og opptøyer:

We’ve already strengthened our enforcement against militias, conspiracy networks like QAnon, and other groups that could be used to organize violence or civil unrest in the period after the elections. We have already removed thousands of these groups and removed even more from being included in our recommendations and search results. We will continue to ramp up enforcement against these groups over the coming weeks.