In recent events, Facebook has decided to display the name of the winning contestant for the presidential elections on their social media platform. They have decided to send out a notification on Facebook & Instagram once it’s sent out into the public by the majority of media outlets. The company spokesperson Mr. Tom Reynolds explained how the social media giant plans on presenting the presidential candidate results using a link that will take the users back to the voting information centre. For now, the company has planned to show the presidential candidates’ name in the notification at the top of Facebook & Instagram titled, “A Presidential Winner Has Been Projected – [name of the winner] is the winner of the 2020 US Presidential Election.”
This was revealed by Tom Reynolds in one of the emails he sent to The Verge.
The winner’s information will not be accumulated from a single source but it will come from a number of news outlets including names like ABC News, Fox News, CBS News, NBC News, etc. It will help determine who’s the winning candidate and will then be displayed on the page accordingly.
Previously, Facebook announced how it is taking several steps to minimize the sharing of wrong information through its platform ahead of 3rd November. Till the election completes, there’s an indefinite ban on running US-based political ads and the sales and purchases of political ads has also been freezed. Facebook has a stringent policy on strictly banning ads which spread false information such as claiming victory. As of Thursday, Facebook took the initial step in minimizing the indecency of false campaigns by taking down a group of 300,000 people naming the campaign, “Stop the Steal.”
It also blocked several hashtags which became part of the false claims surrounding election fraud.
For now Facebook believes that other media outlets such as Fox news and Breitbart can fill the vacuum. It will still be unintentionally politicized way before the election results come in. However, presently Facebook is unconcerned about its political standpoint and would like to stay neutral with running any form of political campaign. Allowing social media outlets as a place to run political campaigns will make the platform biased and supportive to a certain political party and Facebook doesn’t wish to see itself there.
Since the time the false news about Joe Biden’s son started circulating the social media platform, Facebook started using a new deployment tool called the “viral content review system.” The tool acts as the perfect circuit breaker which prevents the spread of false information across platforms.
As Facebook battles with designating a name for the tool, it has found out that the tool has immense potential. It can easily block the spread of a tsunami of wrong information around a certain topic.
It’s a great tool for minimizing the false spread of misinformation on a variety of political and health related topics on the Internet. When false news gets published on the Internet, it ends up spreading a lot of misinformation which leads the audience astray and in the wrong directions. With Facebook’s new circuit breaker tool, social media attempts to cut down on the occurrence of false spread but the tool has its downside and it may run a counter tactic against Facebook’s business campaign efforts.
In recent events, New York Time listed 4 possible false election stories which were circulating widely in the market. One of them was such a baseless rant which talked a lot about a Democratic coup viewed for over 3 million times. Such incidents compelled Facebook to take the necessary step of finding a robust solution which can block the spread of this viral content spread.
Facebook is taking considerable measures to ensure that they can provide the right information. For now, we are waiting for the presidential elections to conclude so Facebook can display results.
Who do you think is going to win the US presidential elections? Is it going to be Biden or will it be Trump all over again. By the looks of it, we believe Mr. Biden is taking the lead. Would you like to share your insight with us? Feel free to leave a comment on the official Tech Wire Hub.