Facebook's new midterm elections policy prohibits doubting election integrity

According to a new policy crafted by Facebook parent company Meta, users will be prohibited from doubting the integrity of the 2022 midterm elections. 

“With the 2022 US midterms on the horizon, we are setting out how our approach applies in this election cycle, which is largely consistent with the policies and safeguards we had in place during the 2020 US Presidential election,” Meta President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg wrote in a blog post Tuesday. 

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was found to have tampered in the 2020 US presidential election by violating bribery laws, spending $419 million to influence the vote, and censoring an explosive story by the New York Post which was damning to Hunter Biden. Almost 50 percent of Biden voters knew nothing of the laptop scandal at the time of the election and about 16 percent said they would not have voted for Biden had they known, according to a survey from The Media Research Center. 

Nevertheless, Meta has vowed to fight “domestic influence campaigns.” 

“Our approach to the 2022 US midterms applies learnings from the 2020 election cycle and exceeds the measures we implemented during the last midterm election in 2018,” the announcement continued. “This includes advanced security operations to fight foreign interference and domestic influence campaigns, our network of independent fact-checking partners, our industry-leading transparency measures around political advertising and pages, as well as new measures to help keep poll workers safe.” 

Then the company outlined the election discourse that will be prohibited, which includes “calling into question the legitimacy of the upcoming election.” 

“As was the case in the US in 2020, election-related content we will remove includes misinformation about the dates, locations, times, and methods of voting; misinformation about who can vote, whether a vote will be counted, and qualifications for voting; and calls for violence related to voting, voter registration, or the administration or outcome of an election. We will reject ads encouraging people not to vote or calling into question the legitimacy of the upcoming election.” 

Meta also announced that it would be using fact-checkers to decide the truth throughout the election so “people can decide for themselves.” 

“We have 10 fact-checking partners in the US to address viral misinformation,” the company said. “We add warning labels to content they debunk so that people can decide for themselves what to read, trust and share. We’re also investing an additional $5 million in fact-checking and media literacy initiatives ahead of the midterms.” 

As reported by America’s Frontline News this week, Twitter also announced a new policy ahead of the midterm elections “to protect civic conversation” which includes both censoring what the tech giant deems false and promoting its own opinions to users.