Facebook Braces Itself for Trump to Cast Doubt on Election Results – The New York Times

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To bolster the effort, Facebook invited those in government, think tanks and academia to participate and conduct exercises around the hypothetical election situations.

An idea that came up during one exercise — that Facebook label posts from state media so users know they are reading government-sponsored content — was put into effect in June, said Graham Brookie, director of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, who joined the session.

“We can see that their policy decisions are being affected by these exercises,” he said.

But Facebook was less decisive on other issues. If a post suggested that mail-in voting was broken, or encouraged people to send in multiple copies of their mail-in ballots, the company would not remove the messages if they were framed as a suggestion or a question, one person who advised the company said. Under Facebook’s rules, it takes down only voting-related posts that are statements with obviously false and misleading information.

In recent months, Facebook turned more to postelection planning. That shift accelerated this month when Mr. Trump said more on the issue, two Facebook employees said.

On Aug. 3, Mr. Trump questioned whether the Democratic primary in New York’s 12th Congressional District should be rerun because of long delays in counting mail-in ballots.

“Nobody knows what’s happening with the ballots and the lost ballots and the fraudulent ballots, I guess,” he said.

The next day, Mr. Trump broadened his attack, falsely stating that mail-in ballots lead to more voter fraud nationwide. “Mail ballots are very dangerous for this country because of cheaters,” he said. “They go collect them. They are fraudulent in many cases.”

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/21/technology/facebook-trump-election.html

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