Tired of Political Ads? You Can Now Opt Out of Them on Facebook
Over the last few years Facebook has dealt with its fair share of criticism. Most recently, the controversy has been regarding the spread of political ads on users’ feeds knowing that some ads contained false or misleading information.
But that is (sort of) about to change.
Last week Facebook announced that, ahead of the upcoming 2020 elections, they are rolling out a solution to help combat misinformation from spreading throughout their platform (which also includes Instagram).
The social media giant explained that it would now allow users within the United States to essentially ‘opt out’ of seeing election, political, or social issue related ads from candidates or committees on both their Facebook and Instagram feeds.
In a post on USA Today, Mark Zuckerberg, who is the chief executive of Facebook, wrote, “Everyone wants to see politicians held accountable for what they say — and I know many people want us to moderate and remove more of their content. We have rules against speech that will cause imminent physical harm or suppress voting, and no one is exempt from them. But accountability only works if we can see what those seeking our votes are saying, even if we viscerally dislike what they say.” Further in the post, he went on to say, “For those of you who’ve already made up your minds and just want the election to be over, we hear you — so we’re also introducing the ability to turn off seeing political ads. We’ll still remind you to vote.”
Critics are arguing this is less of a solution and more of a ‘shift of responsibility’ and that Facebook should do more to moderate what is published on its site. However you feel, this move will allow the platform to continue to share political ads on feeds of those who are ‘opted in.’
In addition to the announced opt out feature, Facebook unveiled an information center on voting. The new feature would give users more data on elections with details such as how and when to vote, information on voter registration vote by mail, and early voting.
The feature will be seen at the top of news feeds on both Facebook and Instagram for United States users. The roll out will be gradual, starting with a small ‘pilot’ group and then expanding across the US platform.
Sources:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/17/tech/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-political-ads/index.html
https://www.govtech.com/question-of-the-day/Question-of-the-Day-for-06182020.html
