Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says it will remove videos of Donald Trump encouraging people to vote twice

Facebook will be taking down videos of the US president telling people to vote twice, the company told Axios on Thursday.

In the video President Trump suggests people in North Carolina should vote first by mail-in vote, then go to the polling station and vote again if the mail-in vote has not yet been counted.

The president was not clear he thought voters should ascertain whether their mail-in vote had been counted, and it is illegal to vote more than once in an election.

Trump said: “On your ballots, if you get the unsolicited ballots, send it in, and then go and make sure it’s counted and if it doesn’t tabulate, you vote.

“This video violates our policies prohibiting voter fraud and we will remove it unless it is shared to correct the record,” a Facebook spokesman told Axios.

In other words so long as users are posting the video to point out it’s wrong it can remain on the site, but if it’s shared in earnest Facebook will remove it.

Speaking to Axios on Thursday, Facebook’s spokesman said it hadn’t taken down any versions of the video yet.

Facebook wasn’t immediately available to comment  on whether it had removed any videos since then when contacted by Business Insider.

Trump tweeted a string of similar claims about voting on Thursday, and Twitter placed his tweets behind a click-through notice alerting users that they break the platform’s rules on “civic and election integrity.”

Facebook drew the ire of the Trump campaign this week after it announced a set of precautionary measures relating to preventing the spread of misinformation on Thursday.

One of those measures is a total ban on new political ads in the week before the election.

Samantha Zager deputy national press secretary for the Trump campaign told Business Insider in response: “In the last seven days of the most important election in our history, President Trump will be banned from defending himself on the largest platform in America.” 

Read the original article on Business Insider

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