Facebook will stop accepting new political ads seven days before November presidential election

Facebook will stop accepting new political ads in the U.S. in the week before the November presidential election, company CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday.

The move is part of an effort by the social media platform to safeguard against the kind of election interference that occurred in the 2016 presidential race.

“The US elections are just two months away, and with COVID-19 affecting communities across the country, I’m concerned about the challenges people could face when voting,” Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post. “I’m also worried that with our nation so divided and election results potentially taking days or even weeks to be finalized, there could be an increased risk of civil unrest across the country.”

Zuckerberg is his announcement suggested the platform won't accept such ads in the seven days before Nov. 3 because it won't have enough time to vet them.

"We're going to block new political and issue ads during the final week of the campaign," he wrote. "It's important that campaigns can run get out the vote campaigns, and I generally believe the best antidote to bad speech is more speech, but in the final days of an election there may not be enough time to contest new claims. So in the week before the election, we won't accept new political or issue ads."