Facebook lets people officially endorse presidential candidates, apparently intending to ignite arguments

Candidates can choose to broadcast their endorsements on their page, sending your information out to their millions of followers

Republican U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump and Democratic U.S. presidential nominee Hillary Clinton speak during their presidential town hall debate at Washington University in St. Louis (REUTERS/Jim Young)

Facebook is encouraging people to publicly and officially endorse either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.

The move, apparently intended on making people discuss or argue about politics even more on the service, allows people to make a public commitment to the candidate they’re supporting.

It works by heading to a candidate’s Facebook page – not just those of Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, but also third-party candidates like Jill Stein or Gary Johnson – and clicking on the “Endorsements” option on the left hand side. That will bring up an option to choose who you want to allow to see your endorsement – whether it is just public or only to your friends - and lets you write something, like an explanation of why you’ve chosen who you have.

If you pick the option to make your endorsement public, then it will also allow the candidate’s page to feature that endorsement. That might end up broadcasting it to the candidates’ millions of followers.

Facebook intends to make the endorsements system open to just about everyone. The only thing that’s required is that people make the category of their page “Politician, Political Candidate, or Government Official”, according to Facebook’s help page, meaning that there’ll be no need for the endorsements to be tied to an election.

Facebook has also added an “Issues” tab on candidates’ pages, giving them a way of showing their positions on different issues on their page.