Meta is allowing political ads that question the 2020 election

Meta’s social media platforms now allow political ads questioning the 2020 presidential election but will censor ads questioning the 2024 election, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

The company permits fraud claims about past elections but not current or future ones, according to its updated policy. Meta rolled out the policy after blocking certain Republicans during the 2022 midterm election primaries from releasing ads with assertions about the 2020 election being fraudulent, according to the WSJ.

Meta executives decided to take free speech into account when making the call to allow ads questioning the 2020 election, individuals familiar with the matter told the WSJ. They considered previous instances of U.S. election results that many Americans questioned.

The tech giant now hosts ads on its platforms that say the 2020 election was “rigged” or “stolen,” according to the WSJ, which cited an ad by former President Donald Trump, who made that assertion in an August advertisement on Facebook.

The latest policy prohibits “ads that discourage people from voting in an election,” “ads with premature claims of election victory,” “ads that call into question the legitimacy of the methods and processes of elections, as well as their outcomes” and “ads about upcoming elections in current or future years, as well as ongoing elections that have not been finalized.”

Meta “consider[s] an election to be finalized when it has been certified and officials have been sworn into office,” it explains.

The policy applies to the United States, Brazil, Israel, and Italy, according to Meta.

Meta’s former policy asserted that it blocked “ads that claim voter fraud (such as voter impersonation, duplicate voting, or ineligible individuals voting) is widespread and/or alters the outcome of elections and/or results in a fraudulent or corrupt election,” according to an archived policy page from 2021.

Meta told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the policy is not new as it announced it in August 2022.

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