Facebook will ban ads that cast doubt on the election or make baseless claims of voter fraud

• Facebook will ban advertisements that seek to delegitimize the outcome of the November 3 election, the company announced this week.
• The ban will prohibit ads that call an entire method of voting — like mail-in voting — inherently fraudulent, or that use isolated incidents of voter fraud to sow doubt about the results of the election.
• President Donald Trump has repeatedly used his Facebook account to make false claims about how mail-in voting works, and has refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses the election.

Facebook will ban ads that sow doubt about the legitimacy of the November 3 election or that spread false claims about voter fraud, the company announced this week.

The policy will prevent groups from running ads that claim an entire type of voting, like voting by mail, is fraudulent, or that use isolated examples of voting fraud to delegitimize an entire election, Facebook's director of product management Rob Leathern tweeted Wednesday.

The new policy comes as President Donald Trump has increasingly attempted to sow doubt about the results of the upcoming election, claiming without evidence that mail-in voting is inherently fraudulent. Trump claimed at Tuesday's presidential debate that the election "is going to be a fraud like you've never seen."

Facebook's policy will go into effect immediately across both Facebook and Instagram, Leathern said.

The company has previously banned ads that include misinformation about how to vote. However, these policies don't extend to organic, non-advertisement posts. Trump has claimed in multiple Facebook posts that mail-in voting is fraudulent — while Facebook didn't remove those posts, they did attach a warning label with a link to facts about mail-in voting.