海角大神

Beginning Thursday, U.S. Facebook users who post about voting may start seeing an addendum to their messages 鈥� labels directing readers to authoritative information about the upcoming presidential election.

It's the social network's latest step to to聽combat election-related misinformation聽on its platform as the Nov. 3 election nears 鈥� one in which many voters may be submitting ballots by mail for the first time. Facebook began adding similar links to posts about in-person and mail-in balloting聽by federal politicians, including President Donald Trump, in July.

These labels will link to a new聽voter information hub聽similar to聽one about COVID-19聽that Facebook says has been seen by billions of users around the world. The labels will read, 鈥淰isit the Voting Information Center for election resources and official updates.鈥�

Despite such efforts, Facebook continues to face widespread criticism around how it handles misinformation around elections and other matters. The company has generally refused to fact-check ads by politicians, for instance, and a聽two-year audit聽of its civil rights practices faulted the company for leaving U.S. elections 鈥渆xposed to interference by the President and others who seek to use misinformation to sow confusion and suppress voting.鈥�

The effectiveness of such labels will depend on how well Facebook鈥檚 artificial intelligence system identifies the posts that really need them, said Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology鈥檚 Center for Civic Media. If every post containing the word 鈥渧ote鈥� or 鈥渧oting鈥� gets an informational link, he said, 鈥減eople will start ignoring those links.鈥�

Facebook expects the voter hub to reach at least 160 million people in the United States, said Emily Dalton Smith, who serves as head of social impact at the company. The primary focus is registering people to vote, she said, but the information people see will evolve throughout the election season.

鈥淭his is a unique election and a unique election season," she said. 鈥淐ertainly we have never gone through an election during a global pandemic."

Other tech companies, Twitter and Google, which owns YouTube, have undertaken similar efforts around the November election. Twitter said it is working on expanding its policies to address 鈥渘ew and unique challenges鈥� related to this year鈥檚 elections, including misinformation around mail-in voting.

Looking ahead to November, Facebook said it is 鈥渁ctively speaking with election officials about the potential of misinformation around election results as an emerging threat."

The company did not give details on the potential threats, but said that a prolonged ballot process where results are not immediately clear 鈥渉as the potential to be exploited in order to sow distrust in the election outcome."

鈥淥ne way we plan to fight this is by using the Voting Information Center and the US Elections digest in Facebook News to make sure people have easy access to the latest, authoritative information and news on and after Election Night," Naomi Gleit, vice president of product management and social impact, wrote in a blog post.

This story was reported by The Associated Press.

Editor鈥檚 note: As a public service, the Monitor has removed the paywall聽for all our coronavirus coverage. It鈥檚 free.