Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Facebook to let users opt out of seeing political ads
Move comes less than 5 months before presidential election
SAN FRANCISCO — For months, Facebook has weathered criticism for its willingness to show all types of political advertising to its billions of users, even if those ads contained lies.
Now the company is changing — sort of.
This week, the social network said it would allow people in the United States to opt out of seeing social issue, electoral or political ads from candidates or political action committees in their Facebook or Instagram feeds. The ability to hide those ads will begin with a small group of users in the coming weeks, before rolling out to the rest of the United States and later to several other countries.
“Everyone wants to see politicians held accountable for what they say — and I know many people want us to moderate and remove more of their content,” Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook, wrote in an op-ed in USA Today on Tuesday. “For those of you who’ve already made up your minds and just want the election to be over, we hear you — so we’re also introducing the ability to turn off seeing political ads. We’ll still remind you to vote.”
The move allows Facebook to play both sides of a complicated debate about the role of political advertising on social media before the November presidential election. With the change, Facebook can continue allowing political ads to flow across its network, while also finding a way to reduce the reach of those ads and to offer a concession to critics who have said the company should do more to moderate noxious speech on its platform.
Zuckerberg has long said that Facebook would not police and moderate political ads. That’s because the company does not want to limit the speech of candidates, he has said, especially in smaller elections and those candidates who do not have the deep pockets of the major campaigns.
But critics, including Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, have argued that Facebook’s approach has dangerous consequences, with untruthful political ads leading to the spreading of disinformation and potential voter disenfranchisement. Some Republicans have argued that Facebook should not act as an arbiter of what can and cannot be posted in ads, and that the company’s intervention amounts to censorship.
The Biden presidential campaign lashed out at Facebook over its hands-off policy on political ads last October after President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign released ads on the social network that falsely claimed that Biden had offered to bribe Ukrainian officials to drop an investigation into his son. The Biden campaign has since called for the company to fact-check ads from candidates and their campaigns.
Facebook has previously modified what some users can see with political ads. In January, the company said it would allow people the option to see fewer such ads. The update announced Tuesday will let them opt out entirely.
Other social media companies have taken a harder line on political ads. Last year, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said Twitter would ban all political ads because they presented challenges to civic discourse.