Facebook will pay users to get rid of social media ahead of US elections

Facebook will pay users to deactivate accounts weeks before the U.S. presidential election to understand how social media is affecting democracy. The Daily Mail.

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Facebook is studying the impact of social media on democracy, and as part of its investigation, the social media giant will pay users to deactivate accounts in the 2020 presidential election.

Washington Post reporter Elizabeth Dvoskin posted screenshots of the company's notice regarding the closure of Instagram and Facebook accounts.

It states that the account will be deactivated from the end of September for one or six weeks and users must not have access to the platforms during that time to participate in the program.

The second part of the note prompts users to select a pay rate between $ 10 and $ 20 per week.

A Facebook spokesman confirmed that the company will pay users who fill out surveys or deactivate accounts as part of the study.

“Anyone who chooses to opt in (whether it's completing surveys or turning off FB or IG for a period of time) will receive a refund,” wrote Liz Burgeous, a Facebook spokeswoman. “This is pretty standard for this type of academic research.”

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The note contains a statement noting that users who have agreed to participate in the survey will be asked to complete a survey following the US presidential election on November 3.

On August 31, Facebook shared a report revealing its plans to conduct pre-election research with an external panel of experts. They will understand how social media products can influence voting.

“To continue to enhance what is good for democracy on social media, and mitigate what is wrong, we need more objective, unbiased, empirically-based research,” Facebook explained in a blog post. “That’s why today we’re announcing a new research partnership to better understand the influence of Facebook and Instagram on key political attitudes and behavior during the 2020 US election.”

The message says that the accounts of some people from the United States will be selected to participate in the study, who will receive a notification on Facebook or Instagram.

The firm expects 200 to 000 users to participate in the survey, which includes surveys and “consent to see another product”.

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However, Facebook says that “any survey data collected for this study from consenting study participants will be used for ad targeting.”

The platform, owned by Mark Zuckerberg, not only understands the relationship between social media and democracy, but seeks to use research "to protect elections."

“As a company, we took a hard look at what went wrong with Russian interference in 2016 and made big changes,” the report said.

“There are now three times as many people working on security issues (more than 35 in total). We work closely with the government and law enforcement agencies,” Facebook said. “According to independent research, Facebook has helped fight interference in more than 000 elections since 200 and has reduced the amount of fake news on its platform by more than 2017%.”

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