What Happened When Facebook Banned Political Advertising?

Fake news caused confusion in the 2016 US presidential election, so during the 2020 presidential election, platforms such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter took various measures such as changing policies. Facebook has banned political advertising a week before the presidential election and gradually lifted it after the presidential election, but it is reported how the ban and lifting has changed the news feed.

In Georgia, Facebook's Changes Brought Back a Partisan News Feed – The Markup
https://themarkup.org/citizen-browser/2021/01/05/in-georgia-facebooks-changes-brought-back-a-partisan-news-feed

Georgia runoff ads made Facebook News Feeds more partisan and less informative --The Verge
https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/5/22215067/facebook-ads-georgia-runoff-political-ad-ban-zuckerberg

Facebook took steps to block political advertising for the U.S. presidential election on November 3, 2020, then partially lifted the ban on December 16, and was a fierce battle state on January 5, 2021. The ban on advertising in Georgia has been lifted. The Markup , a non-profit news media, conducted a survey with the help of 58 Facebook users to measure the effectiveness of Facebook's political ad ban. We recorded how the data on the news feed changed in the weeks leading up to the final vote.

You can access the data on which the analysis was based from:

GitHub --the-markup / citizen-browser-georgia: Data from our story 'In Georgia, Facebook's Changes Brought Back a Partisan News Feed' from The Markup's Citizen Browser project.
https://github.com/the-markup/citizen-browser-georgia

As a result of the investigation, most of the news feeds when political advertising was banned were from media such as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution , CNN , and The Wall Street Journal , but once the ban was lifted, It turns out that it was flooded with paid advertising content from political groups such as Congressman Rafael Warnock 's campaign and VoteGOP.

The Markup also discovered that Facebook had released paid content to promote false claims. For example, Facebook has posted an ad for $ 25,000 that David Perdue claims that rival John Osov is 'acquired by China and poses a threat to national security.' It was said that. This claim has already been determined to be false by the fact checker.

Facebook, on the other hand, emphasized that the political content paid on the network is a relatively small part. 'In elections after millions of people have already voted, even such a small sample size emphasizes the political fact that'more people will see political content as the election day approaches.' This is true for online, email, and TV shows, 'said Facebook.

In addition, although it is a political advertisement in Georgia that was lifted on January 5, Facebook announced that it will be banned again from the 6th due to the Georgia Senate election.

An Update on the Georgia Runoff Elections for Advertisers
https://www.facebook.com/gpa/blog/resuming-ads-in-georgia

Facebook to restart political ad ban after Georgia Senate runoffs --POLITICO
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/05/facebook-georgia-political-ad-ban-455205