Facebook will ban ads which discourage people from voting during the 2020 US presidential elections. Announced as part of its second civil rights audit, bans against "Don't Vote" ads will come into effect before the 2019 gubernatorial elections, which is scheduled for November. The Presidential elections will take place a year later in November 2020. Facebook's civil rights audit began in 2018 in order to increase dialogue between the civil rights community and Facebook. The audit team has recommended changes and expansion of Facebook's content moderation policies relating to hate speech, white nationalism, and events, among others. It also studied over- and under-implementation of the moderation policies. Also, Facebook has laid out (in not much detail) its policy against voter suppression and steps to protect the integrity of the US 2020 Census. Recommendations on content moderation In order to keep a check on the content being spread across the social media platform, the audit team has made suggestions to Facebook's existing policies: White Nationalism Policy: Announced in March 2019, the policy bans explicit praise, support, representation of white nationalism and white separatism on Facebook. Facebook also prohibited statement of white supremacy and similar organisations, and other hateful discriminatory content, but did not prohibit white nationalism or white separatism. Recommendation: Facebook should also prohibit content which expressly praises, supports, or represents white nationalist ideology even if it does not explicitly use the terms “white nationalism” or “white separatism”. Events Policy: Facebook prohibits events where people intend to bring weapons to an event/location,…
