US Elections 2020: Facebook to put together emergency measures to tackle possible unrest

With US Elections 2020 being less than two weeks away, tech giant Facebook is reportedly planning to put together emergency measures to regulate the viral content in case of possible unrest caused in the country, reported Wall Street Journal on October 25 citing its sources. As per the media outlet, Facebook is intending to calm the possible violence that can rock the countries with certain tools that will be working differently for all at-risk regions. 

Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone reportedly said that the people at the company have spent several years in building safe and more ‘secure elections’. From applying lessons to hiring experts, Stone said that new teams have been put in place at the California-based company to work around various potential scenarios during or in the aftermath of November elections. 

"We've spent years building for safer, more secure elections. ... We've applied lessons from previous elections, hired experts, and built new teams with experience across different areas to prepare for various scenarios," Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said, as quoted by ANI.

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Tools already used in Myanmar, Sri Lanka

As per reports, the tools that Facebook is planning to deploy around the elections in the United States were initially designed for at-risk nations and has already been used in Myanmar and Sri Lanka. These emergency measures allow the social network to diminish the spread of viral content and even decrease the threshold for the identification of potentially inflammatory posts. However, the company will only implement such tools if there is a critical uproar that can cause violence related to elections. 

The Wall Street Journal also noted that if Facebook ultimately decides to use the tools, it will transform the kind of information that is being received by millions of US citizens. However, this plan has reportedly received backlash from some of the people in a Facebook team along with Republicans and Democrats. 

Earlier, Facebook and Instagram took down 120,000 posts from their platform and rejected over 2.2 million advertisements, informed Facebook's vice president Nick Clegg. Facebook had previously announced that it will stop running political ads in America after polls close on November 3 to reduce chances of ‘confusion or abuse’. The company said that any posts prematurely declaring a winner or contesting the count will be labelled with reliable information from news outlets and election officials. 

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