You Won't Get Political Ads on Facebook for the Rest of the Week

This week, social media users in the US know that their feeds are going to be dominated by one thing and one thing only: politics. Although polls officially close today for the US presidential election, Meta is extending its ban of new political ads until "later this week."

Meta Will Continue to Block Political Ads Beyond Election Day

In an effort to "increase ad transparency and election integrity" on its two major social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram, Meta announced that it would extend its restriction period for new ads related to social issues, political topics, and elections. This means that you won't see new paid advertisements cropping up on your feed originating from political candidates or other election-related campaigns.

What Do Meta's Ad Restrictions Include?

Firstly, Meta's ban on politically-inclined ads includes only newly emerging campaigns, made and submitted after October 29th. So, you might still see some political ads today and this week on Facebook and Instagram. They'll just be campaigns that originated before 12:01 AM Pacific Time on October 29th, 2024.

The ban was initially supposed to be lifted at the end of the day today, November 5th. This would line up with a similar ban from Google, announced previously on Google's Advertising Policies Support site. However, Meta has decided to keep it for a few more days. This could be in anticipation of potential recounts or election contestation.

Types of advertisements that fall into this category include:

• Ads made by or on behalf of a candidate for public office
• Ads or initiatives about the election in general, including encouragement to vote
• Ads or initiatives about social issues in general (defined in Meta's Help Center)
• Ads regulated as political advertising

Meta Prepares for an Extended Election

Of course, there are always going to be feelings expressed on social media before and after a single election day. The political conversation extending beyond the results of an election is to be expected. However, the continuation of ad restrictions suggests that Meta might be anticipating a prolonged decision.

The reason for implementing the advertising measures in the first place was (and still is) to curb misinformation. Essentially, the platform wants to protect candidates' rights to contest claims made in political ads. So, if Candidate A said that Candidate B stands for something horrible, Candidate B should have time and means to refute that before voters go to the polls.

While it's unclear how long US citizens will have to wait until the election is decided, you can easily track election results using Apple's Live Activity feature. How things go over the next 24 hours will likely affect Meta's lift on political ad regulations. Until then, we'll have to do our best to parse through election news online—and hopefully, that information is coming from journalism, and not sponsored posts on Facebook.