Meta Platforms Inc.

08/18/2022 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 08/18/2022 07:46

Italy: Preparing for the 2022 National Elections

As you prepare for the upcoming 2022 Italian National elections, it's important to know how you can effectively reach and engage your supporters and potential voters throughout all stages of your campaign, keep your accounts secure and adhere to our policies.

In preparation for the national elections, we've put together a list of important reminders to keep top-of-mind as you plan your campaign.

Set up and secure your Facebook Page

Get started setting up your Page. Your Facebook Page will allow you to reach and engage the people you care about: your community, voters and supporters. This is separate from a personal Profile (also called an account) that you use to log into Facebook and connect with friends and family. With a Page, you have access to advertising so that you can amplify your message and Page Insights so that you can measure the effectiveness of your content.

Here are helpful links that can enable you to:

Next, view our security best practices guide to help protect your information and keep your accounts and the Pages you manage secure.

Complete the ad authorization process to run ads about social issues, elections or politics

To help protect elections and increase authenticity and transparency, our Advertising Policies require any individual who wants to create or edit ads about social issues, elections or politics (including "get out the vote" campaigns) to first complete the authorization process, place "Paid for by" disclaimers on ads and have these ads enter the Ad Library. Any person creating, modifying, publishing or pausing ads about social issues, elections or politics on a Page is required to complete the ad authorizations process.

All ads marked as political, social or electoral will be included in the Ad Library and will be available for 7 years.

Getting authorized is simple:

Step 1: Go to this page

Step 2: From the dropdown menu, select "Italy" to see country-specific instructions and confirm your identity on your personal Profile (also called an account)

Step 3: Create a disclaimer on your Page (see additional information below). Note: Only Page Admins who have confirmed their identity in Step 2 can complete this step.

Step 4: Link your disclaimer to an eligible ad account

Learn more:

Step 5: Label your ads as being about social issues, elections, or politics

Follow our policies for disclaimers

Disclaimers are an important part of the ad authorization process. All ads about social issues, elections or politics need to have a disclaimer. This disclaimer will appear at the top of any ads you run and include information on the entity that paid for the ad, e.g. "Sponsored - Paid for by Vote for Samantha Weber"*.

*Note: Samantha Weber is a fictitious candidate designed by Facebook. Any similarities between the Samantha Weber materials and real-life candidates or political parties are not intentional.

A disclaimer should:

  • Accurately represent the name of the entity or person responsible for the ad. Advertisers have two ways to get a "Paid for by" disclaimer (and will receive an "About this Ad" icon):

Option 1: Your legal name on ID documents

Option 2: Submit a self-declared organization name (requires a street address, business phone number, email and matching website)

  • Have accurate, valid information at all times.
  • Not include profanity, objectionable language or unrecognizable words or phrases.
  • Not include URLs or acronyms, unless URLs or acronyms make up the name of the organization, which must also be accurately reflected on the website provided.
  • Not wrongfully imply that your ads are paid for by, with or on behalf of Facebook.
  • Not wrongfully imply that a foreign leader has paid for the ad.
  • Not include "Paid for by" language that duplicates the same language provided by Facebook.

Your disclaimer information will be visible on your ads upon click and in the Ad Library. If you do not want your address to be visible, you can hide this before submitting your disclaimer.

Learn more:


Understand, identify and report hate speech

We define hate speech as a direct attack against people on the basis of what we call protected characteristics: race, ethnicity, national origin, disability, religious affiliation, caste, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity and serious disease. Facebook does not tolerate these attacks.

As you engage your supporters and potential voters on our platforms, you can help us identify and quickly remove hate speech by reporting it.

  1. Click the three dots next to the post you'd like to mark as hate speech
  2. Click "Find support or report post"
  3. Select "Hate speech" and the applicable characteristic
  4. Confirm and file report

Learn more:


Learn about how we're helping combat misinformation

We're taking significant steps to fight the spread of misinformation using a three-part strategy - remove content that violates our Community Standards, reduce distribution of stories marked as false and inform people so they can decide what to read, trust and share.

We rely on independent fact-checkers to review and rate the accuracy of stories through original reporting, which may include interviewing primary sources, consulting public data and conducting analyses of media, including photos and video.

As a reminder, under our policies, content, including ads, from politicians is not eligible for review by our third-party fact-checking partners. Learn more about our fact-checking program in this blog.

Key election resources

For any technical support, including account verification, advertisement support and general support you can reach out to our dedicated team.