Facebook to remove ‘militarised’ calls for US poll watchers

Facebook has said it would remove calls for people to engage in poll-watching that use “militarised language” or suggest the goal is to intimidate voters or election officials, tightening the social media company’s restrictions around the US elections.

Facebook also said that it would respond to candidates or parties making premature claims of victory or contesting declared outcomes by adding labels and notifications with authoritative information about the state of the race.

It said it would temporarily stop running political ads in the United States after polls close on November 3.

Alphabet Inc’s Google last month also said it would block election-related ads after the polls closed for an indefinite period. Facebook previously said it would stop accepting new political ads in the week before Election Day and would reject ads prematurely claiming victory.

More news from Facebook today: the company is suspending all political ads after the polls close, indefinitely + banning "militarized language" around poll watching. In the future, Donald Trump Jr's recent "Army for Trump" video would be taken down under new policy.

— Shirin Ghaffary (@shiringhaffary) October 7, 2020

Republicans are mobilising thousands of volunteers to watch early voting sites and ballot drop boxes, part of an effort to look for evidence to back up President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated complaints about voter fraud.

The president’s son Donald Trump Jr sought such volunteers for an “Army for Trump’s election security operation” in a September video that racked up millions of views on social media.

Facebook’s Vice President of Content Policy Monika Bickert said the company would not apply its new policy retroactively, but confirmed that the video would be considered in violation of its rules going forward.

“Under the new policy, if that video were to be posted again, we would indeed be removing it,” she said on a call with reporters.