Social media giant Facebook pulls President Trump’s misleading election ads

The social media giant has removed the President’s election messages which falsely claimed election day had come a week early.

US President Donald Trump’s election campaign has been dealt a blow after social media juggernaut Facebook removed a number of ads in key battleground states.

The messages, which were sent out to tens of thousands of voters on Tuesday, included the messages “Vote Today!” and “Election Day is Today!”

The information was deemed a violation of Facebook’s misinformation policy, as election day is not until next Tuesday, on November 3.

According to theFinancial Times , by the time the messages were removed, they had already been seen by around 200,000 people, the majority of whom were from Florida, Arizona and Georgia.

Those are three of America’s crucial “swing states” which many believe will decide whether Mr Trump is re-elected – or if Democratic hopeful Joe Biden manages to secure a victory.

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The election is set to be a nailbiter. Picture: Mark Makela/Getty Images/AFP

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Last month, the social media giant announced a new policy banning all political ads in the week before the election, and earlier in October it revealed it would also bar all political ads for the week following the vote.

The new rules comes after Facebook was slammed for allowing the Trump team to send misleading messages to voters during the last election.

“As we made clear in our public communications and directly to campaigns, we prohibit ads that say ‘Vote Today’ without additional context or clarity,” Facebook said in a statement.

Facebook’s director of product management Rob Leathern also took to Twitter to announce the company was looking into problems with political ads.

“We’re investigating the issues of some ads being paused incorrectly, and some advertisers having trouble making changes to their campaigns,” he posted.

“We’re working quickly on these fixes, and will share an update once they are resolved.” 

It is not known whether the incorrect Trump campaign ads were deliberately misleading or an honest mistake.

The managing director of Democratic campaign group EStreet Group, Eric Reif, told the Financial Times the Republican Party’s controversial messages should never have been sent.

“It is good that these messages are being taken down but they very plainly never should have been approved in the first place,” he told the publication.

So far, most polls show Mr Biden in the lead – although experts believe the final result will come down the those key swing states, which include Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin.

For Aussies watching the US election unfold, it will kick off on November 3 date local time, although most of the action will unfold the following day, on November 4.

But the final result could be delayed for some time, which means we could know the next president on November 4 – or even weeks later.