Facebook turned down 2.2 million ads that “blocked votes” in the US

Facebook did not place 2.2 million ads on Facebook and Instagram for trying to influence the US presidential election and “obstruct votes.” Facebook says it does not want to relive the ‘trauma’ of 2016.

In addition to the 2.2 million rejected ads, Facebook removed 120,000 messages and posted warnings on 150 million fake news messages. This is reported by Facebook’s communications top man Nick Clegg to the French newspaper Journal du Dimanche. Agence France-Presse news agency writes about it.

Clegg does not provide examples of the content or origin of the messages. He does report that Facebook is better prepared for the US presidential elections than in 2016 and that the company does not want to go through ‘the trauma’ of that year again. At the time, the platform was misused for Russian disinformation campaigns that attempted to influence the US presidential election and the Brexit referendum. Since then, Facebook has been trying to prevent repetition with human moderators, artificial intelligence and collaboration with fact checkers.

Nick Clegg is a former British politician; from 2010 to 2015 he was Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. In 2016, Clegg complained to Journal du Dimanche that Facebook had done nothing to prevent interference on its platform in the US elections. In 2018, Facebook hired him as a lobbyist with the job title Vice President of Global Affairs and Communications.