Tech giant Facebook laid out its censorship plan on Thursday, stating it would begin demoting content that its “systems predict may be misinformation” relating to election fraud.
Forbes reports that Facebook has announced that it plans to demote content “our systems predict may be misinformation” relating to election fraud. A Facebook spokesperson told Forbes that the social media company is “seeing more reports of inaccurate claims about the election” and “while many of these claims have low engagement on our platform, we are taking additional temporary steps.”
The spokesperson told Forbes that Facebook would be taking a number of actions including “demotions for content on Facebook and Instagram that our systems predict may be misinformation, including debunked claims about voting” and “limiting the distribution of Live videos that may relate to the election on Facebook.”
On Thursday, Facebook blacklisted a grassroots group called “Stop the Steal,” deleting the group after it had gained more than 300,000 members.
Facebook has made efforts to censor its platform closely during the election cycle. Of 22 posts across social media by President Trump, 11 have been labeled as “misleading” by Twitter and Facebook. The posts include the President’s claims to victory and assertions of election fraud taking place. Twitter hid some posts on the President’s timeline and warned users that “some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process,” and restricted users’ ability to like or retweet the tweets.
Underneath some of President Trump’s Facebook posts, the social media company warned users that “final votes may different from the initial vote counts” or “elections officials follow strict rules when it comes to ballot counting, handling and reporting,” but users were still able to reply to and share the posts.
Read more about this at Breitbart News here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com
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