U.S. presidential elections: Facebook rejected 2.2 million ads

Facebook announced it rejected 2.2 million ads ahead of U.S. elections. According to the company, they were intended to „obstruct voting” in the coming election.

Over 2 million ads rejected and over 100.000 posts blocked

Nick Clegg, global affairs VP for Facebook, answered the questions from the French weekly journal – Le Journal du Dimanche. During the interview he told them about the fact that the company rejected over two million ads both on Facebook and Instagram that would stop people voting in the presidential election.

Clegg also added that Facebook paid attention to the posts trying to do the same thing. So, about 120.000 of those were deleted from the platform, so far.

The VP mentioned that, in order to deal with such big amounts of data, there are 35.000 people who take care of the platform’s security.

Also, 70 specialized media outlets became Facebook’s partners and involved in fact checking that try to keep the platform as clear as possible. But these outlets are just complementary to the artificial intelligence it uses.

In fact, Facebook introduced the fact-checking program immediately after the 2016 elections, and also added it to Instagram in 2017.

Facebook is in a delicate position

Despite the Facebook’s representative statements, the company finds itself in a really delicate situation. Last week, a report in the Wall Street Journal proved that Facebook worked hard in order to calm down conservatives complaining about its algorithm bias.

So, WSJ mentioned that the company designed changes to its algorithm in order to reduce visibility of content from left-leaning sites. According to the newspaper, this had Mark Zuckerberg’s approval.

Although the situation might seem better in 2020 that it was for years ago, there is no guarantee that voting interference will not appear again, this time.

Still, the fact that it decided not to block only over two million ads, but alos those that would wrongly claim victory in the presidential race might mean a big step forward.