Bengaluru, NFAPost: Facebook is all set to resume political ads on its platform in the US, starting today. This comes as a big relief to grass-roots political groups who rely on Facebook to reach out to their communities for mass campaigning and publicity.
Facebook Confirms Lifting of Ban Officially
The social media giant has confirmed the impending removal of ban on political ads in the US on Wednesday. The announcement reverses the temporary ban imposed by Facebook in the aftermath of 2020 presidential election in November to control the spread of misinformation.
Here is what Facebook announced in its official blog post:
“We’re resuming political, electoral and social issue ads in the United States on Thursday, March 4. We put this temporary ban in place after the November 2020 election to avoid confusion or abuse following Election Day.”
“We’ve heard a lot of feedback about this and learned more about political and electoral ads during this election cycle. As a result, we plan to use the coming months to take a closer look at how these ads work on our service to see where further changes may be merited.”
Google Adopts New Measures to Curb Misinformation
Facebook’s online advertising rival Google had also employed a similar move to prevent spread of misinformation with political ads for a brief period after the US election and the US Capital insurrection. The latter, however, was lifted in late February.
Georgia had earlier received a temporary reprieve for posting political ads from Facebook, just before heading into its election campaigns in January.
Now, a similar relief is being issued across the US, following the Facebook ban-removal requests made by the US Democratic Party’s House and Senate campaign arms.
Several party executives reportedly highlighted the ineffectiveness of the ban policy in curbing disinformation while hindering the communication process with their voters, The Hill reports.
Nevertheless, critics still believe that political ads could endanger democracy by spreading lies or misinformation at the expense of benefitting its propagators to win elections.
