• by Sara Guaglione , September 4, 2020

Facebook and Reuters are partnering with the National Election Pool to provide live U.S. presidential election-night results to social media users on the platform.

Throughout election night, Reuters' data will be shown on Facebook's Voting information Center, which went live in August to provide U.S. users with voting tools and information.

The data delivered by Reuters will also be shared through Facebook push notifications.

This will include live election results, exit polls and winner projections from the National Election Pool (NEP), a consortium made up of the four biggest U.S. networks (ABC News, CBS News, CNN and NBC News), as well as Edison Research. 

"This partnership will provide billions of Facebook users with fast, accurate and trusted Election Day news via Reuters data offering,” stated Reuters president Michael Friedenberg.  

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg added: “Importantly, if any candidate or campaign tries to declare victory before the results are in, we'll add a label to their post educating that official results are not yet in and directing people to the official results.”

The Reuters data offering is part of a large multimedia effort by the publisher that will include data, text, pictures, video and graphics from election night, as well as interactive features and election-night maps.

Separately, Facebook announced yesterday it will block new political advertising submitted the week before Election Day, held on November 3.

It's the first time the social media giant has limited political ads in the U.S.

While social-media companies like Twitter banned political ads last year due to the spread of disinformation and micro-targeting, Facebook has purposefully allowed them to continue on its platform.

Facebook also said it would block posts that use the COVID-19 pandemic to discourage people from voting.