Civil rights leaders press Zuckerberg on political ads

Facebook CEO holds meeting at his house amid controversy over non-exclusion policy

With the 2020 elections and Census count looming, civil rights groups discussed Facebook’s controversial political ad policy with CEO Mark Zuckerberg at his Palo Alto house.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and other leaders of 10 civil rights groups came to the Monday night steakor-scallops dinner.

Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change, said in an interview afterward that possible voter suppression was one of the main topics of discussion. The company’s political ad policy could be counterproductive to the changes Facebook has made in its policies and enforcement of rules related to hate speech and misinformation, he and other civil rights advocates say.

“We want to make sure there’s no ‘mission accomplished’ flag,” Robinson said. “Some of the biggest purveyors of voter suppression are politicians.”

Muslim Advocates Executive Director Farhana Khera, who was also at the meeting, agreed. Saying politicians from the local level on up sow misinformation, she cited the recent sharing of a meme featuring Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minnesota — with a gun and supposedly at a terrorist training camp — by North Dakota Republican state Sen. Oley Larsen on Facebook. The photo was taken four years before Omar was born, an AP factcheck shows.

“If a politician like that is able to hide behind the (political-ad) exemption and foment hate, that’s just not a good thing,” Khera said in an interview.

Facebook has faced plenty of criticism over its policy, which came into the spotlight after it refused to remove ads by President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign containing disproven claims about former Vice President Joe Biden. Some politicians, like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, have run deliberately false ads on Facebook in protest.

Zuckerberg has defended the policy of not fact-checking political ads as a matter of freedom of speech, but pressure on Facebook has intensified amid discontent among its own employees over the issue, and after fellow social media giant Twitter announced last week that it will no longer run political ads. In announcing the move, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said “paying to increase the reach of political speech has significant ramifications that today’s democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle.”

Will Zuckerberg and Facebook’s other top executives change their minds? Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and Nick Clegg, the former U.K. deputy prime minister who is now the company’s head of global affairs, were also present at the meeting. Though Sandberg has been talking with the same groups for the past couple of years about the civil rights implications of the company’s policies, this was the first time Zuckerberg talked directly with them, Khera said.

While she and others were asked not to characterize what the Facebook executives said at the meeting, she said, “I feel like he came with openness to hearing the issues that were raised.” She expressed optimism about the CEO getting directly involved.

“I don’t question when they say they care,” Robinson said. But he added: “We’re looking for action over words at this point.”

Facebook has not returned requests for comment as of Tuesday morning.