Facebook announced to ban new political ads from its platform.

In an attempt to limit disinformation on its platform, social media giant Facebook announced to block new political ads ahead of the presidential election in November. Undoubtedly, this is a sweeping action by the company to confine voter misinformation, but could it be effective in minimizing election chaos and misperception? Probably not. Because Facebook's action in contradiction of election chaos only vetoes submission of ads in the week before the election, and it will continue to allow those submissions before October 27. Banning political ads on the social media site can just limit the ads; political misinformation also spreads through people's posts and discussions in private Facebook groups.

Besides, the company doesn't remove the existing ads that may still flourish before election day. Countries often implement election silence laws that prohibit the use of digital or television media for political campaigning 48 hours before polls. In France's 2017 presidential election, Facebook did the same by stalling political ads and clamping down on campaign content before, in keeping with those laws. Even though, French voters swamped with fake news stories on their social media feeds ahead of the election. Many reports that time exposed to Russian influence that tried to sway voters away from Emmanuel Macron by releasing a hoard of his private emails and other documents online.

Researchers from Oxford University were found then a cache of the political links shared on Twitter in France were based on misinformation, which identified as deliberately false and expressed ideologically extreme, hyper-partisan or conspiratorial views with logical flaws and opinions presented as facts.

A month ago, 2017 France's presidential election, Facebook acknowledged the wide-ranging effects of fake news throughout the French election. Reportedly, the company admitted that it had to take action against 30,000 pages that spread misinformation.

Spike in Political Ads on Facebook

Last year, Facebook made a controversial decision by announcing to exempt most political ads from fact-checking. However, the statement faced a swift backlash, particularly among leading Democratic candidates for president. Afterward, the social media giant announced the refinements to its policy to address lawmakers' concerns. With its revised policy, the company said it will allow people to see fewer political and social issue ads on Facebook and Instagram. On the contrary, it didn't mention how much ads.

Researcher at New York University's Online Political Transparency Project Laura Edelson found that in the week before Labor Day in 2018, 76,500 political ads were created on Facebook. She further divulged that in the week before September 2020, 118,239 political ads were created on Facebook, a 54 percent increase.

Though Facebook said it will now forbid new political ads in the seven days before the election, ads that already placed earlier can continue running. And politicians will still manage the amount they spend on their existing ads and continue targeting people with those ads.