Facebook Inc on Thursday said it would ban ads that aim to limit participation in next year’s US census, which officials and lawmakers fear could be targeted by disinformation aiming to disrupt the count.
The census is used to determine each state’s representation in the US Congress and to guide the allocation of as much as US$1.5 trillion a year in federal funds.
In a blog post, Facebook also said it would remove certain misleading content about the census, such as when and how to participate and consequences such as arrests, or that an individual’s census information would be shared with another government agency, which is against federal law. Other incorrect information will be eligible for fact-checking.
In September, a meme spread on Facebook that falsely claimed robbers were accessing homes by posing as government workers seeking census information. It was debunked by fact-checkers, but not removed, in line with Facebook’s general fact-checking policies.
Facebook said it would prohibit ads that “portray census participation as useless or meaningless or advise people not to participate in the census.”
Although Facebook exempts politicians’ ads from fact-checking, the company said politicians would not be allowed to run ads or post content that conflicts with its census policies.
Posts “earnestly expressing fear about the census,” will be allowed, Facebook officials told reporters, although posts will be monitored for reach and might have context added.
The census, which takes place once a decade, is expected to be largely filled out online for the first time next year.
Census experts have expressed concern for months that Facebook was not taking seriously the disinformation threat and would not be ready to combat it.
In March, reports said that the US Census Bureau had asked Alphabet Inc’s Google, Twitter and Facebook to help it fend off “fake news” campaigns.
However, three sources directly involved in countering disinformation around the census from the nonprofit, academic and private sectors said that Facebook’s presentations to census advocates have lacked detail and at times seemed more focused on promoting its own platform for ads.
The sources spoke on condition of anonymity.
Facebook officials declined to comment on particular presentations or meetings.
One of the sources cited frustration with the way Facebook handled the home robbers meme in September.
Facebook did not remove the meme and did not provide the Census Bureau with detailed trends on how it was being shared, company officials said.
“We didn’t fact-check it as quickly as we should have,” a Facebook official said.
“It appears Facebook has finally listened,” Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights president Vanita Gupta said in a statement on the new policy. “The census and our elections demand extreme vigilance — there are no do-overs.”
Rashad Robinson, president of civil rights group Color of Change, said the policy reflected many of the organization’s demands, but it was “only as good as its enforcement and transparency, which ... is an area that Facebook has failed in the past.”
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