Social media parent company Meta announced last week that it was going to place a moratorium on political advertising leading up to the midterm elections next month.
For seven days, from Nov. 1 to 8, Facebook and Meta's other platforms will cease allowing ads about social issues, elections, or politics.
The company said it's making a move to control the spread of misinformation, which was prevalent in the 2016 Presidential election.
SMU Political Science professor Cal Jilson thinks the moratorium is a good idea.
"I think that social media does have a responsibility to try to manage its platform so that it serves its constituents," Jilson said. "But it is a tremendously difficult job because there is just an absolute fire hose of information."
Jilson says the information provided through the advertisements isn't always accurate or beneficial.
"It's almost impossible to get between the purveyors of the misinformation and the citizens who are taking it in… some of whom want that misinformation because it supports their views, it makes them feel good, or they chuckle about it."
One of the biggest races on the ballot in Texas in November is that of the Governor.
Challenger Beto O'Rourke is currently in a fairly tight race against incumbent Governor Greg Abbot, and that means both candidates are spending big on advertising in these final weeks.
"You know they're spending a lot of money," Jilson said. "They're trying to fill up all the channels that might help him get in front of people."
According to Meta, in the past seven days, O'Rourke has spent close to $490,000 on ads on the social platform. Governor Abbott's campaign has spent about $230,000.
Still, Jilson said both will be big spenders on advertising of all kinds in the campaign's final weeks, and that will likely mean the difference between reaching voters or not in specific segments of the voting population.
"There are, you know, 8 or 10 channels that campaigns use to try to communicate with voters," Jilson said. "They're [the candidates] still going to be able to advertise on television, in the lead-in to the local news, and that sort of thing… most people will hear about the campaign on some of those other channels."
Meta says it'll fight misinformation by removing posts that mislead people on where, when, and how to vote or that call for violence based on the voting or election outcome.
In a statement, Meta said they would also remove ads that try to dissuade people from voting or that outwardly question whether or not an election was legitimate.
Ten independent fact-checkers will also be on hand at the company for the next several weeks and will label any posts deemed "misleading" or untrue. But, the company says it'll continue to stop short of removing those posts altogether.
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