Election time is not the easiest time to be on social media.
Everyone feels the need to voice their opinion and battle on others, so Facebook is trying to elevate that tension by paying people to take a break on Facebook and Instagram until election time.
The Washington Post reported that some users will receive a pop-up asking users to select how much money they'd be willing to receive in order to deactivate their Instagram and Facebook, with Facebook giving the options of $10, $15, and $20 per week as some users would be asked to deactivate for one week while others could be asked to leave the platform up to six weeks total.
A spokesperson from Facebook was quoted saying, "To continue to amplify all that is good for democracy on social media, and mitigate against that which is not, we need more objective, dispassionate, empirically grounded research. That's why today we are announcing a new research partnership to better understand the impact of Facebook and Instagram on key political attitudes and behaviors during the US 2020 elections."
Facebook has not commented as to how people are being chosen for this research or when exactly the findings will be released.
