FACEBOOK'S VOTING LABELS ON CANDIDATE POSTS SOW CONFUSION

Facebook has started adding informational labels to all posts about voting by federal elected officials and candidates in the U.S., as it said it would do. But the move appears to be sowing confusion rather than dispelling it.

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This week, the social network applied labels to posts by President Donald Trump and by Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, among others. The simple labels read “get official voting info” and direct people to a hub with information from authoritative election sources such as state and local officials.

The intention, as Facebook laid it out in late June, was to provide links to unbiased information about when and how to vote on election-related posts. Instead, though, they’re being misinterpreted — in some cases as an endorsement of misleading or false claims.

Trump’s Facebook post read: “Mail-In Voting unless changed by the courts, will lead to the most CORRUPT ELECTION in our Nation’s History! #RIGGEDELECTION.” Facebook’s label, placed under the post, says “Get official voting info on how to vote in the 2020 US Election at