Facebook confirms it has stopped recommending that people join online groups dealing with political or social issues in the lead up to Election Day

“This is a measure we put in place in the lead-up to Election Day. We will assess when to lift them afterwards, but they are temporary." — Copy

BuzzFeed News 2020-10-31

Context & Ripple Effects

This was the quietest piece of Facebook's pre-election lockdown. Weeks earlier it had announced it would stop accepting new political ads a week before the vote and would temporarily suspend political ads after polls close, and the group-recommendation freeze extended the same logic to organic reach: political and social-issue groups would stop being surfaced to users who hadn't joined them.

The framing as 'temporary' mattered — three months later Zuckerberg made the freeze permanent, and in between Facebook put political and social groups on 60-day probation with close monitoring. What was sold as an election-eve circuit breaker became the new baseline for how the platform treats civic content.

First-order effects

Political and social-issue group admins lose the main growth channel overnight: recommendations were how groups reached sympathetic non-members, so recruitment and mobilization stall heading into Election Day.

Second-order effects

Groups pivot to paid ads and off-platform channels to replace lost organic discovery, colliding with the ad blackout Facebook had already imposed — squeezing civic organizers on both paid and organic fronts at once.

Third-order effects

If 'temporary' measures keep hardening into policy — as they did with the permanent ban on civic group recommendations — platform distribution becomes a dial regulators and platforms negotiate over each election cycle, with organic reach for political speech treated as a risk to be throttled rather than a product to grow.

The trend: Platforms are converting emergency election throttles into standing distribution policy, with organic political reach increasingly treated as a liability to be managed down.

Discussion

@rmac18 @rmac18 on x
Also interesting to note that this change has been called for by activists and Facebook critics for a long time. Mozilla ran an ad in the Washington Post 10 days ago asking FB to make this very move. Here is a reaction from @ashleyboyd: https://foundation.mozilla.org/ ...
@rmac18 @rmac18 on x
Interesting to see Facebook arbitrarily pause features that it understands can cause polarization or radicalization for an election, but start them back up again once that event is over. At what point do you just stop them? https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ...
@rmac18 Ryan Mac on x
Facebook quietly suspended its suggested group recommendations for political and social issue groups for the election. Algorithmically generated group recs have been an engine for polarization. FB says the move is only temporary. (w/ @CraigSilverman) https://www.buzzfeednews.com/…
@mccarthyryanj Ryan McCarthy on x
This has long been something that civil rights activists have called for. Very odd that FB chose to do this quietly. https://twitter.com/...
@asankin Aaron Sankin on x
I am currently looking at the Facebook page for a prominent publisher for Holocaust denial literature and it's recommending three “related pages”: 1. An openly anti-Semitic group 2. A openly white nationalist podcast 3. Another publisher of Holocaust denial literature https://twi…
@jesselehrich Jesse Lehrich on x
stopping group recommendations has been one of our main asks. this is theoretically a good step — but it's confounding why they never mentioned it & I have many questions about implementation... https://twitter.com/...
@ambermac Amber Mac on x
Things that make you go 🤔👇 https://twitter.com/...
@rashadrobinson Rashad Robinson on x
For months, @ColorOfChange members and our partners have demanded @Facebook to suspend group recommendations that lead users to extremist content. FB leadership, #DoYourJob and keep it paused post-#ElectionDay until FB stops fueling violent militias and far-right extremists. http…
@rmac18 @rmac18 on x
I still don't understand why Facebook didn't announce this change. Reading the tea leaves, perhaps it's because they didn't to make it seem like the company was bowing to outside pressure. FB critics, nonetheless, are thrilled and want to make this change permanent.
@oneunderscore__ Ben Collins on x
This is actually an enormously important step. It basically cuts off the biggest funnel into extremist pipelines. It's weird they're not bragging about it. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ...
@etbrooking Emerson T. Brooking on x
our longstanding product feature is *extremely* dangerous. it could destabilize the United States of America. we will turn it back on next week. https://twitter.com/...
@jessbrandt Jessica Brandt on x
Important acknowledgement that part of the problem is how information moves across the platform. Content moderation isn't the be-all, end-all. We need to address structural aspects of the challenge (algorithms) too. https://twitter.com/...
@kevinroose Kevin Roose on x
To be clear I am not dunking on FB for trying this! They are trying to be responsible here. I just wonder how you justify turning the thing back on after the election, given that 90% of users don't live in the US and there's always an election somewhere.
@slpng_giants @slpng_giants on x
@kevinroose But that would infer that you actually care about the idea of democracy versus quarterly growth.
@kevinroose Kevin Roose on x
If your recommendation algorithm is such a risk to political stability that you turn it off in the lead-up to an election, shouldn't you just....leave it off? (this is why I am not a billionaire) https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ...
@rmac18 Ryan Mac on x
Zuckerberg mentioned the change in passing at a Senate hearing while being questioned by Sen. @EdMarkey. Facebook has been announcing various platform changes for the election, but not this one for some reason. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ...
@instagramcomms @instagramcomms on x
Starting today, for people in the U.S. we will temporarily remove the “Recent” tab from hashtag pages. We're doing this to reduce the real-time spread of potentially harmful content that could pop up around the election.
@instagramcomms @instagramcomms on x
As we near the U.S. elections, we're making changes to make it harder for people to come across possible misinformation on Instagram.
@bafeldman Brian Feldman on x
in the 207 weeks between elections, go nuts tho https://twitter.com/...
@jmgrygiel @jmgrygiel on x
Hmmm sounds like something that could have been deployed during a pandemic. Choices. https://twitter.com/...
@tangledearthart Addy on x
This *may* reduce the spread of misinformation, possibly. But what it *will* do for certain, is hurt small businesses and artists at the beginning of what is the busiest time of year for a lot of us. https://twitter.com/...
@domclare Dominique Clare on x
Or just permanently delete facebook from the world and give Instagram back to the people who made it before Facebook ruined it 🤷🏾‍♂ ️ All problems solved. https://twitter.com/...
@kantrowitz Alex Kantrowitz on x
At a certain point, you wonder what all these *temporary* changes to core features says about how the tech companies actually view these features https://twitter.com/...
@joannastern Joanna Stern on x
But why just for the election? If this is a way misinformation spreads, why not do it always? https://twitter.com/...
@siackapp @siackapp on x
Imagine needing to disable a core functionality of your app to avoid brainwashing voters before they vote https://twitter.com/...
@herrmanndigital David Herrmann on x
When the tech companies have too much power.... https://twitter.com/...
@reciaimthenet @reciaimthenet on x
More BS https://twitter.com/...

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