US Presidential Elections: Facebook To Deploy Tools To Regulate Content

Washington: With the Presidential elections slated for November 3, social media giant Facebook is likely to initiate emergency measures to regulate viral content in case of “election-related conflicts and unrest in the United States”, sources told the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

Facebook has specially designed tools for “at-risk” countries to curb possible violence, news agency ANI quoted the newspaper’s report.

“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,”  WSJ quoted Facebook spokesman Andy Stone as saying.

These tools reportedly have been already used in “at-risk” countries like Myanmar and Sri Lanka. “They allow holding back the spread of viral content and lower the threshold for the identification of potentially inflammatory posts,” ANI report said.

The paper further revealed that Facebook intends to use these tools contingent on election-related violence; if implemented, the conglomerate can transform information that Americans receive.

However, many Republican and Democratic leaders have condemned this move as they believe that the “implementation of content regulation measures will hamper political discussion,” WSJ report added.