Facebook's ban on political ads in the week prior to the election applies to election officials, who use Facebook to inform voters about the voting process

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ProPublica 2020-09-05 Jeremy B. Merrill

Context & Ripple Effects

When Bloomberg reported in July that Facebook was weighing a pre-election political ad ban, the framing was interference defense; when the company confirmed it on September 4, the ban on new political ads in the final week was presented as a protection for voters. ProPublica's follow-up surfaces the design flaw: the policy's definition of 'political ads' sweeps in election officials themselves, the one category of advertiser whose paid posts explain how to vote.

The collision matters because the final week is exactly when voting procedures — registration deadlines, polling changes, mail-in rules — get the most paid promotion, and Slate argues the same blanket ban will suppress late-breaking speech campaigns need to respond to news. One blunt rule is now hitting both civic information and campaign response at once.

First-order effects

Election officials lose paid Facebook distribution for voter-process information during the final week — the period when procedural details change most and reach matters most.

Second-order effects

Officials and campaigns shift to organic posts and non-Facebook channels for last-week messaging, and Facebook faces pressure to carve out a government/civic exemption rather than defend a rule that blocks its own election-integrity goal.

Third-order effects

The episode points toward platform policy built by advertiser category rather than content alone — blunt interference defenses keep colliding with legitimate civic speech, forcing exemptions that determine who can actually pay to inform the public.

The trend: Platform-wide election rules are colliding with civic speech, pushing Facebook and its peers toward category-based carve-outs as the price of blunt interference defenses.

Discussion

@kreissdaniel Daniel Kreiss on x
Holy shit: “Included in the ban are ads purchased by election officials — secretaries of state and boards of elections — who use Facebook to inform voters about how voting will work.” https://www.propublica.org/...
@evelyndouek Evelyn Douek on x
Facebook is not a government, but one thing they currently share in common is that we should not uncritically report on their announcements until we've read the fine print and answered the “yeah, but can they actually enforce it?” question https://twitter.com/...
@danprimack Dan Primack on x
Interesting phrasing from Zuck: “We and other media” https://www.axios.com/...
@eshap @eshap on x
“We deserve everything we get now. Truly. I'm ashamed and appalled by this decision.” #Facebook Employees, after Zuck kept Trump's “vote 2X!” post up. @Facebook abets political propagandists, period. I agree with Facebook's employees: #DeleteFacebook. https://www.buzzfeednews.com…
@chronotope Aram Zucker-Scharff on x
The thing about Facebook is it has all the hubris of engineer thinking: the belief that it can, by itself, find the answers to any question regardless of field; the inability to seek answers from others; a disinterest in long term; applied on a huge scale. https://twitter.com/...
@slpng_giants @slpng_giants on x
JFC @facebook. This fucking company. https://twitter.com/...
@bencoates1 Ben Coates on x
I'm worried there might be a fire, says world's biggest retailer of petrol and matches https://twitter.com/...
@mcclure111 Mcc on x
Facebook's political ad ban window really looks less like a legit attempt to avoid being a source of manipulation and more like an attempt to ensure any manipulation before the election is done by “earned media”, such as Ben Shapiro, who Facebook lets break its post-pumping rules…
@profcarroll @profcarroll on x
So supremely neoliberal that the corporate monopoly makes our election rules now. https://twitter.com/...
@sivavaid Siva Vaidhyanathan on x
Ok. I take back every nice and patient thing I said about the Facebook election ad ban. It's really dumb. https://twitter.com/...
@stengel Richard Stengel on x
This is a start. Other platforms should refuse to take ads during the final week. News orgs should be wary of publishing stories that seek to delegitimize the results of the election. Winning the news competition doesn't matter if we lose our democracy. https://www.axios.com/...
@jason_kint Jason Kint on x
Are you out of your $&@& minds, Facebook????? https://twitter.com/...
@stevenlevy Steven Levy on x
What she said. https://twitter.com/...
@semil @semil on x
Zuckerberg: “There is, unfortunately, I think, a heightened risk of civil unrest in the period between voting and a result being called.” https://twitter.com/...
@mmasnick Mike Masnick on x
We said this when Twitter banned political ads: it sounds good, but as with all content moderation, there are many, many, many more edge cases than most people realize. https://twitter.com/...
@mosseri Adam Mosseri on x
Our teams at Instagram and Facebook are focused on protecting this election. That's why today we announced a series of changes that encourage voting, ensure people have accurate information about voting and reduce the chance of post-election uncertainty. https://about.fb.com/...
@asanwal Anand Sanwal on x
Damned if you do, damned if you don't https://twitter.com/...
@digiphile Alex Howard on x
Dear @Facebook, Please exempt Secretaries of State & boards of elections like @Vote4DC from your new “quiet period” before Election Day. Upholding election integrity means amplifying trustworthy sources of info & connecting voters, not blocking officials: https://www.propublica.o…
@joshelman Josh Elman on x
This is a scary post from Zuckerberg and Facebook on what they are doing to try to preserve a fair election. It shows how much fear there is that there is a loss of central trust in the information we get from others and “official” sources. https://www.facebook.com/...
@donie Donie O'Sullivan on x
Politicians will still be able to pay Facebook millions to run false ads all the way through Election Day as long as they buy the ads before the final week of the campaign, Facebook announces. https://twitter.com/...
@twittersafety @twittersafety on x
We placed a public interest notice on two Tweets in this thread for violating our Civic Integrity Policy, specifically for encouraging people to potentially vote twice. https://twitter.com/...
@zeynep Zeynep Tufekci on x
There are the details. And there is this: Mark Zuckerberg, alone, gets to set key rules—with significant consequences—for one of the most important elections in recent history. That should not be lost in the dust of who these changes will hurt or benefit. https://www.nytimes.com/…
@hypervisible Doomscrolling Eternal on x
“Facebook is not a bystander or a passive observer of this behavior. It holds all the power here. It is an active and willing participant in every lie its political customers propagate on its service.” https://gizmodo.com/...
@axios @axios on x
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg “warned of “a heightened risk of civil unrest in the period between voting and a result being called” in an interview for “Axios on HBO.” https://www.axios.com/...
@anandwrites Anand Giridharadas on x
If your ads are too dangerous a week before the election, your ads are also too dangerous now. https://twitter.com/...
@rbreich Robert Reich on x
Why not ban them now, 9 weeks before the election? https://www.cnbc.com/...
@mikeisaac Rat King on x
just want to make clear that based on the rules mark zuckerberg shared literally hours ago, everything about Trumps post constitutes misinformation around voting and should be taken down. Instead they've applied a label to it. Why do these rules exist if they aren't followed? htt…
@issielapowsky Issie Lapowsky on x
As a reporter, Facebook's ad policy is interesting. But as an American, Mark's whole post is terrifying. FB's a global company that's worked through elections in countries with no peaceful transfer of power. That feels like what they're preparing for here. https://www.facebook.co…
@annewheaton Anne Wheaton on x
We have such an incompetent president that Twitter has to let users know he is lying and encouraging a felony. Super. https://twitter.com/...
@parkermolloy Parker Molloy on x
Reminder that when Twitter does stuff like this, it's not “censoring” Trump in any way, but *actually* giving him preferential treatment by letting his tweets stay up that a regular person would have taken down. https://twitter.com/...
@owillis Oliver Willis on x
anyone else who breaks twitter rules this often gets thrown off the service https://twitter.com/...
@carlquintanilla Carl Quintanilla on x
(NYT) - Less than 24 hours after President Trump suggested North Carolina voters attempt to vote twice to test if “their system's as good as they say it is,” Facebook said it would take down posts if users .. reposted them without proper context. $FB https://www.nytimes.com/...
@jessekblum Jesse Blumenthal on x
This is a bad decision by Facebook on two levels. 1) Substantively it's bad policy 2) As a PR move it doesn't mollify any of Facebook's critics. https://twitter.com/...
@alexisohanian @alexisohanian on x
We should be asking every social media platform hard questions about their plans for this Presidential election. https://twitter.com/...
@jbillinson Josh Billinson on x
Not really sure this does much of anything when a record number of people are expected to have mailed in ballots well before that week! https://twitter.com/...
@shannimcg Shannon McGregor, PhD on x
“Postelection, Facebook said it would quash any candidates' attempts at claiming false victories by redirecting users to accurate information on the results.” HOW will Facebook make these calls? Under their current policy, politicians can lie in ads. But not *these* lies? https:/…
@slpng_giants @slpng_giants on x
How is it that @facebook will remove the video but will only attach a weak sauce information link to this post?? https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
@canadagraphs @canadagraphs on x
Sometimes Facebook gets it right. Not often enough, but sometimes. https://twitter.com/...
@mattlynley Matthew Lynley on x
Good fucking god the gymnastics Facebook will execute to ensure this content remains up https://twitter.com/...
@marceelias Marc E. Elias on x
The President just committed a felony.👀 https://www.nbcnews.com/...

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