The company said on Wednesday that it will stop ads running “during an election campaign period or a silence period” in the run-up to the vote. Google considers election ads as any paid posts that “either promote or oppose a political party or the candidacy of a person or party” running for public office.
“There’s a lot at stake for the Philippines [in 2022] because if we don’t get fact-based, evidence-based reasoning, a shared reality, then we’re not going to come out of this. We’re going to splinter even further,” she told CNN Business.
In a country where the internet is heavily used but is slow and unreliable, the accessibility of social media in the Philippines makes it “a prime platform for swaying public opinion,” according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“Consequently, political actors are willing to do anything to capture the public’s attention,” it said in analysis of the upcoming elections published last month.
CNN Business has contacted Facebook for details of its political ads policy ahead of the Philippines elections. During the last US election, the company only banned ads that tried to declare a winning candidate before official results were released.
— CNN’s Rishi Iyengar, Brian Fung and Donie O’Sullivan contributed to this story.
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