Facebook will indefinitely ban political and issue-based ads after the US Presidential elections slated for November 3 this year. The social networking company wants to avoid commotion during election time in the US. Facebook had also announced that it would ban ads declaring the unverified premature victory of candidates.

“While ads are an important way to express voice, we plan to temporarily stop running all social issues, electoral, or political ads in the US after the polls close on November 3rd, to reduce opportunities for confusion or abuse,” Facebook in a blog noted.

In case of a candidate falsely claiming victory on Facebook, it will add "more specific information" contradicting the claim. Facebook will also add labels to some election-related posts with a link to its Voting Information Center. Facebook and Instagram will add an information box on the news feed of apps, noting whether major media outlets have declared a winner.

Facebook further noted that if a candidate declared the winner by major media outlets is contested by another candidate or party, Facebook will show the name of the declared winning candidate with notifications at the top of Facebook and Instagram, as well as label posts from presidential candidates, with the declared winner’s name and a link to the Voting Information Center.

Last week Facebook announced that it will ban ads that seek to delegitimize elections on the platform. Facebook also banned all groups, themes, and accounts that claimed to belong to conspiracy theory group QAnon.

Facebook also noted that it will remove any calls that indicate coordinated interference at or bringing weapons to polling places. It will also remove calls that use militarized language or suggest that the goal is to intimidate, exert control, or display power over election officials or voters.

Facebook urged users to join Facebook Protect, which was launched last year to offer security tools and additional protections to safeguard the Facebook and Instagram accounts of campaigns, elected officials, federal and state political party committees, and staff. “These efforts are part of our ongoing coordination with law enforcement and election authorities at all levels to protect the integrity of the election,” Facebook noted.

Source:indiatoday

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Facebook has banned an extremist anti-government network loosely associated with the broader “boogaloo” movement, a slang term supporters use to refer to a second Civil War or a collapse of civilization.

But the platform didn’t try to name the group, underscoring the difficulty of grappling with an amorphous network linked to a string of domestic terror plots that appears to obfuscate its existence. Among other complications, its internet-savvy members tend to keep their distance from one another, frequently change their symbols and catch phrases and mask their intentions with sarcasm.

The move by Facebook designates this group as a dangerous organization similar to the Islamic State group and white supremacists, both of which are already banned from its service. The social network is not banning all references to “boogaloo” and said it is only removing groups, accounts and pages when they have a “clear connection to violence or a credible threat to public safety.”

The loose movement is named after “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo,” a 1984 sequel to a movie about breakdancing. “Boogaloo” supporters have shown up at protests over COVID-19 lockdown orders, carrying rifles and wearing tactical gear over Hawaiian shirts — themselves a reference to “big luau,” a homophone for “boogaloo” sometimes favored by group members. Facebook said the movement dates back to 2012 and that it has been tracking it closely since last year.

Earlier in June, Steven Carrillo, an Air Force sergeant with ties to the boogaloo movement, fatally shot a federal security officer and wounded his partner outside a U.S. courthouse, ambushed and killed a California sheriff’s deputy and injured four other officers in Oakland, California. According to the criminal complaint, Carrillo posted in a Facebook group, “It’s on our coast now, this needs to be nationwide. It’s a great opportunity to target the specialty soup bois. Keep that energy going.”

The statement was followed by two fire emojis and a link to a YouTube video showing a large crowd attacking two California Highway Patrol vehicles. According to the FBI “soup bois” may be a term that followers of the boogaloo movement used to refer to federal law enforcement agents.

While the “boogaloo’” term has been embraced by white supremacist groups and other far-right extremists, many supporters insist they aren’t racist or truly advocating for violence.

Violent and extremist groups are increasingly turning to encrypted communications networks and fringe social platforms with no content moderation to congregate, which makes them more difficult to track.

As part of Tuesday’s announcement, Facebook said it has removed 220 Facebook accounts, 95 Instagram accounts, 28 Pages and 106 groups that that comprise the violent Boogaloo-affiliated network. It also took down 400 other groups and 100 pages that hosted similar content as the violent network but were maintained by accounts outside of it.

The company said it has so far found no evidence of foreign actors amplifying “boogaloo”-related material.

Social media companies are facing a reckoning over hate speech on their platforms. , Reddit, an online comment forum that is one of the world’s most popular websites, on Monday banned a forum that supported President-Donald Trump as part of a crackdown on hate speech.

Live-streaming site Twitch, which is owned by Amazon, also temporarily suspended Trump’s campaign account for violating its hateful conduct rules. YouTube, meanwhile, banned several prominent white nationalist figures from its platform, including Stefan Molyneux, David Duke and Richard Spencer.

Civil rights groups have called on large advertisers to stop Facebook ad campaigns during July, saying the social network isn’t doing enough to curtail racist and violent content on its platform and several major advertisers have signed on to the boycott.

On Wednesday, more than 500 companies officially kicked off an advertising boycott intended to pressure Facebook into taking a stronger stand against hate speech. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has agreed to meet with its organizers early next week.

But whether Zuckerberg agrees to further tighten the social network’s carefully crafted rules probably boils down to a more fundamental question: Does Facebook need big brand advertisers more than the brands need Facebook?

In a broad sense, the current boycott, which will last at least a month, is like nothing Facebook has experienced before. Following weeks of protests against police violence and racial injustice, major brands have for the first time joined together to protest still-prevalent hate speech on Facebook’s platforms by taking aim at the social network’s $70 billion in annual ad revenue.

After years of piecemeal measures to address hate, abuse and misinformation on its service, Facebook’s critics hope that pinching the company where it hurts will push it toward more meaningful change. As of Wednesday, 530 companies have signed on — and that’s not counting businesses like Target and Starbucks, which have paused advertising but did not formally join the “Stop Hate for Profit” campaign, which calls its action a “pause” rather than a boycott.

“Many businesses told us how they had been ignored when asking Facebook for changes,” campaign organizers wrote in a letter to advertisers this week. “Together, we finally got Facebook’s attention.”

But Facebook’s already-tarnished public image may sustain more damage than its business. If the ad pause lasts one month, Citi Investment Research analyst Jason Bazinet estimates, the likely impact on Facebook’s stock will be $1 per share. Based on Wednesday’s closing price of $237.92, that’s a decline of less than half a percent.

If the businesses extend their boycott indefinitely, Bazinet suggests the likely impact would be $17 a share, or about a 7% decline. That’s less than the 8% drop Facebook shares sustained on Friday after global consumer-products maker Unilever said it would pause advertising on Facebook and Instagram for the rest of the year.

Also, Facebook shares have already bounced back from that dip.

On Wednesday, Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president of global affairs and communications, tried to reassure businesses that Facebook “does not benefit from hate” and said the company has every incentive to remove hate speech from its service. He acknowledged that “many of our critics are angry about the inflammatory rhetoric President Trump has posted on our platform and others, and want us to be more aggressive in removing his speech.”

Clegg, however, offered few concessions, and instead repeated Zuckerberg’s frequent talking point that “the only way to hold the powerful to account is ultimately through the ballot box.” He pointed to Facebook’s get-out-the-vote efforts as evidence of the company’s commitment, along with the billions of dollars, tens of thousands of content moderators and other investments it has made in trying to improve its platform.

While Facebook is making efforts to hear out its critics, it remains clear that ultimate decisions will always rest with its founder and CEO, who holds the majority of the company’s voting shares and could effectively run the company for life, should he desire to.

It’s not clear that he’ll see any reason to bend further to meet protesters’ demands.

“Data of past boycotts suggests the observable impact is relatively mild,” said Brian Wieser, global president of business intelligence at GroupM, advertising holding company WPP’s media agency arm.

At the same time, he added, given these “extraordinary times,” it’s possible that a long-term, pervasive boycott could shift advertising dollars away from Facebook to other companies.

Beyond bad PR, though, experts say the protest isn’t likely to make a lasting dent in Facebook’s ad revenue, in part because plenty of other advertisers can step in. Stifel analysts said in a note to investors this week that “well over” 70% of Facebook’s advertising dollars come from small and medium-sized businesses and “these advertisers may be less concerned with the optics of where their ads are placed than large brands.” Citing data from Pathmatics, Stifel said the top 100 brands spent roughly $4.2 billion on Facebook ads last year, representing around 6% of the company’s nearly $70 billion of total ad revenue in 2019.

Facebook hosts more than 8 million advertisers, according to JPMorgan. “We do not expect significant risk to numbers for Facebook as many other marketers ... will take advantage of potentially lower-priced inventory,” JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth wrote in an investor note.