Facebook bans ads that discourage people from voting

Lying in Facebook political ads is ok — as long as the lie isn't infringing on people's right to cast their vote.

During a conference call Monday in which Facebook detailed its latest efforts to bolster election integrity and stop the spread of misinformation, Mark Zuckerberg announced some new measures the company is taking to fight voter suppression.

Voter suppression is a term that describes efforts to prevent people from voting by spreading anti-voting sentiment, sharing incorrect information about how to vote, and even undermining get out the vote efforts and voting infrastructure.

Now, Facebook will outright prohibit ads that discourage people from voting. For example, Facebook wouldn't allow someone to publish an ad that suggests that voting is pointless.

Facebook expanded its policies around voter suppression content ahead of the 2018 U.S. midterms. That included prohibiting content that spread false information about how and when to vote, incorrect voter qualifications (such as misleading I.D. requirements), and suggestions of violent or race-based retribution for voting. Now, the new policy specifically addresses anti-voting sentiment in paid ads.

Facebook also says that it is proactively removing and preventing the posting of this content before people report it: "Our Elections Operations Center removed more than 45,000 pieces of content that violated these policies — more than 90% of which our systems detected before anyone reported the content to us," the blog post explaining the change reads.

During the question and answer portion of the call, Zuckerberg answered questions about how the new policy would work in practice. For example, recent reports detailed that Facebook would allow politicians to run ads that contain false information — a sentiment that Zuckerberg repeatedly defended on the call on the basis of free political speech. Reporters asked, if a politician ran an ad that contained false information about voting, which policy would take precedence?

Zuckerberg answered that the anti-voter suppression rules would win out.

"The voter suppression rules would be paramount in that case," Zuckerberg said. "We give very broad deference to political speech... but it's not everything."

Apparently, it is possible for a politician to cross a line.