Facebook keeps political ad policy that still allows lies
Company maintains the ads should be federally regulated
Facebook said Thursday that it intends to make no major changes in its policies toward political ads, a decision that will still allow candidates to include lies about their rivals in such advertisements during the current election cycle.
Rob Leathern, Facebook’s director of product management, said that in addition to not fact- checking political ads for truthfulness, the company will continue to allow for microtargeting of political ads. Microtargeting lets advertisers direct their messages at small sections of Facebook users and is seen as a method by which misleading information can be spread across the social network.
In a company blog post, Leathern said that Facebook believes that companies shouldn’t make decisions about politicial ads and their content, but that such ads should be subject to federal regulations. Leathern said Facebook has given its support to the Honest Ads Act, a bill that is intended to provide for more transparency in online political ads, and which is supported by Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham and Democratic Sens. Mark Warner and Amy Klobuchar.
However, Leathern said that due to the lack of federal guidelines about online political ad content,
“Facebook and other companies are left to design their own policies. We have based ours on the principle that people should be able to hear from those who wish to lead them, warts and all, and that what they say should be scrutinized and debated in public.”
Facebook’s take on political advertising solidifies a position that CEO Mark Zuckerberg detailed in an October speech at Georgetown University. At that time, Zuckerberg said he was against factchecking political ads on the grounds that the practice hampered the ability of people to form their own opinions about candidates and their policies.
“We don’t do this to help politicians, but because we think people should see for themselves what politicians are saying,” Zuckerberg said in October.
Facebook holding its ground on its political ad policy runs counter to recent changes to political ads that have been announced by Twitter and Google. In November, Twitter put in place a ban on all political candidate and issue advertising, while Google implemented a ban on advertisers being able to target their ads at voters based on those individuals’ political affiliation.
Leathern also said that even though it is leaving its main political ad policy untouched, politicians still can’t get away with fully saying whatever they want in their ads.
“All users must abide by our community standards, which apply to ads and include policies that, for example, ban hate speech, harmful content and content designed to intimidate voters or stop them from exercising their right to vote,” Leathern said.
Gennie Gebhart, associate director of research at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that Facebook’s is showing that it has a double standard when it comes to what politicians and members of the general public can say on its platform.
“Exempting politicians from rules meant to protect users from lies, misinformation, and violent content gives those in power special privileges and applies no accountability for spreading falsehoods and hate,” Gebhart said. “Making the platform a free-for- all for politicians is a bad way of ensuring that they don’t exploit Facebook’s complaint system to censor each other’s ads.”
Facebook has been under scrutiny regarding the role its political ads have played in elections since the 2016 U. S. presidential campaign, in which Russian trolls bought thousands of dollars worth of ads on Facebook, and British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica used improperly obtained data on 87 million Americans to promote the campaign of then-Republican candidate Donald Trump.
On Tuesday, Andrew Bosworth, who ran Facebook’s ad operations in 2016, and now oversees its hardware business, said that he believes Facebook is responsible for Trump winning the presidency, but said Trump’s victory was due to his strong digital media campaign and not because of Russian interference or Cambridge Analytica’s actions.
Facebook didn’t immediately return a request for further comment on its political ad policies.