Facebook is prepping to deal with an unprecedented problem: a US president who may refuse to peacefully transfer power in case he loses. And to mitigate its own role in that situation, Facebook has announced that after US polls close on November 3, Facebook will temporarily stop displaying all political, electoral and social issue ads in the US. And to prevent a candidate (read: Trump) from dictating the narrative, Facebook will place notifications on top of the News Feed telling users the official results. This is to “reduce opportunities for confusion or abuse”. The platform has not defined an end date for the ban on ads; it “will notify advertisers when this policy is lifted”. If a candidate/party (read: Trump/Republican Party) declares premature victory before the official results are announced, Facebook will “add more specific information in the notifications that counting is still in progress and no winner has been determined”. [caption id="attachment_222888" align="aligncenter" width="758"] How notifications may be displayed. Source: Facebook[/caption] In case a candidate contests the result announced by major media outlets, Facebook will show the name of the winning candidate with notifications on top of Facebook and Instagram and label posts from Joe Biden and Trump with the declared winner’s name and a link to Facebook’s Voting Information Centre. Google, too, has told advertisers that it will “broadly block” election ads after polls close on November 3, Axios reported. In September 2020, Facebook had announced that it would not accept new political ads in the week before…
