2.5 million US users register to vote using Facebook, Instagram, Messenger

Facebook announced Monday that 2.5 million U.S. users have registered to vote in the upcoming general election through Facebook, Instagram and Messenger. 

The number is more than halfway toward Facebook’s goal, announced earlier this year, of registering 4 million U.S. users to vote ahead of Nov. 3. 

The registrations were announced as part of a kickoff of what Facebook described in a blog post as a “week of action” meant to highlight National Voter Registration Day on Tuesday. 

“With six weeks until Election Day and registration deadlines fast approaching in many states, this week we’re putting the full force of our platform behind this campaign to empower every eligible voter to make their voice heard in this election,” the company wrote in the blog post. 

As part of the effort, Facebook will continue showing users in the U.S. information about how to vote and register at the top of their news feeds through Friday, and on Monday kicked off a “More Questions, More Answers” campaign to raise voter awareness on its platform as well as the Facebook-owned Instagram.

Additionally, Facebook will run a virtual “vote-a-thon” on Tuesday featuring various celebrities to encourage people to vote, and it plans to launch a feature to help users get further information around early in-person and mail-in voting. 

The moves mark the latest election-related effort by Facebook over the past few months. 

The company announced earlier this month that it would not run any political ads during the week prior to Election Day to curb misinformation, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, announced last month that they were donating $300 million to promote safe and secure elections. 

Facebook’s efforts on elections have been in the spotlight since 2016, when Russian agents were able to successfully run a disinformation campaign favoring now-President Trump. Facebook later estimated that around 150 million U.S. users were exposed to posts from the Internet Research Agency, a Russian troll farm. 

The announcement of new voter registrations came a week after Snapchat said that it had successfully registered more than 400,000 U.S. users to vote through the app as part of its efforts ahead of the general election.