Facebook says it is planning for the possibility of election-related conflicts with tools developed to stop the spread of misinformation, which would limit the reach of popular posts as they go viral.
“We’ve spent years building for safer, more secure elections,” Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said. “We’ve applied lessons from previous elections, hired experts, and built new teams with experience across different areas to prepare for various scenarios.”
The tools Facebook plans to use have been tested in countries such as Sri Lanka and Myanmar, which the tech giant labeled as “at-risk.” The company will be able to slow the spread of viral content and lower the threshold for what it considers inflammatory or dangerous posts. The tech giant will also be able to adjust news feeds to change the content users see.
Altogether, the company says it could alter what tens of millions of Americans see when they open Facebook, with the goal of limiting users’ exposures to misinformation, sensationalism, or incitement of violence.
“It’s not an automated solution. It requires people to say, ‘This is something we need to handle,’” a person familiar with Facebook’s plans told the Wall Street Journal.
Facebook has received criticism for deploying similar measures during this election cycle, including earlier this month when it suppressed the reach of a New York Post article that contained emails from a laptop allegedly belonging to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said last month that the company would do everything in its power to prevent “civil unrest” over the 2020 election.
“We need to be doing everything that we can to reduce the chances of violence or civil unrest in the wake of this election,” he told Axios.
Zuckerberg said in a company-wide conference call last week that Facebook has already limited speech regarding concerns over election and coronavirus pandemic misinformation. He said that a potential landslide victory in the election could help prevent any kind of unrest from being likely.
“It looks like potentially Biden’s margin of leading in the polls has increased, which may lead to a result, which is not close, which, could be potentially helpful — if there’s just a decisive victory from someone — that could be helpful for clarity and for not having violence or civil unrest after the election,” Zuckerberg told employees.
