Meta’s ban on new election ads is no longer ending on election day

Meta’s ban on new election ads will be extended for a few more days.

The tech company, which owns Facebook and Instagram, will continue to block political adverts until a few days after the polls have closed, per a report from Axios.

Meta’s policy, which has been in place since 2020, means that “new social issue, electoral, and political ads” are blocked during the final week of the U.S. general election. The decision to extend this block, according to Axios, will take into account the post-election period when votes may still be being counted.

“While new ads will not be able to run during this restriction period, ads that have served at least one impression prior to the restriction period will be allowed to continue running with limited editing capabilities,” reads a Facebook developer blog post. “The rationale behind this restriction period remains the same as previous years — in the final days of an election, we recognize there may not be enough time to contest new claims made in ads.”

These are Meta’s provided dates and times for ad restriction:

Between Tuesday, October 29, 2024 and Tuesday, November 5, 2024: The ad restriction period will be in effect. We will not allow any new ads to run about social issues, elections or politics in the US starting 12:01 AM PT on Tuesday, October 29th, 2024 through 11:59 PM PT on Tuesday, November 5, 2024.

At 12:00 AM PT on Wednesday, November 6, 2024: We will allow new ads about social issues, elections or politics to be published. At this time, you will also be able to start making edits to your ads again.

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Misinformation is clearly a hot topic over at Meta right now. Two weeks ago the tech giant’s oversight board — which consists of policymakers, academics, and journalists — said it had “serious concerns” about Meta’s political content moderation, following a decision by the platform to remove (and later restore) a post comparing Democratic candidates Kamala Harris and Tim Walz to the main characters from Dumb and Dumber.

Beyond Meta, election misinformation continues to be an issue. The FBI recently issued a warning about election disinformation videos, and over on X (formerly Twitter) Community Notes is failing to flag election misinformation.