By Bill Badour
If you’ve been on Facebook recently, you’ve probably seen a political ad. Many social media sites such as Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitch and Pinterest have banned political advertising. Other social media sites – including Snapchat, Reddit and YouTube – have guidelines for political ads to follow.
Facebook, however, is the only social media platform that doesn’t have any fact-checking or guidelines for political ads.
Social media websites are especially critical to regulate because, unlike television ads, they can be used to target individuals based on their opinions and what they’ve shown interest in.
In the mind of Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook is a public domain where ideas can be debated. The problem with false ads, however, is that they circulate among people who are targeted by the ad, and therefore are more likely to believe what the ad says. While people should be able to fact check for themselves, we know that doesn’t always happen.
Some politicians had fiery responses to Facebook’s lack of policy. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren launched a Facebook ad saying that Zuckerburg and Facebook endorsed Donald Trump, giving him “free reign to lie.”
Facebook is no stranger to political meddling. It was revealed that the data of 87 million of their users was exposed and sold. Facebook allowed Cambridge Analytica to make an app, disguised as a quiz, for the sole purpose of gathering the data of users. Not only did this app expose the data of the user that took the quiz, but it also exposed the data of all of their friends without their knowledge or consent.
Cambridge Analytica was then hired by the Trump campaign in 2016 to help target ads using the data they had acquired. In response to this violation of privacy, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) handed Facebook a $5 billion fine over the company mishandling user data, the largest in FTC history.
From May 2018 to the end of 2019, Trump has spent by far the most money on Facebook political ads. He spent more than $21.5 million over that time frame, practically doubling the next closest politician.
According to TheHill.com, in 2016 a Facebook executive stated that taking down misinformation would “disproportionately affect conservatives.” Regardless, it is important that the information we base our votes on is accurate. No matter who this affects, it would make them more informed by seeing less misinformation.
Facebook has been down this road during the ugly 2016 election and other social media platforms have learned from Facebook’s multi-billion dollar mistake. Yet, Facebook continues to allow the spread of paid misinformation.
Facebook has no reason to not join the other social media in at least having guidelines and basic fact-checking on political ads. If Facebook believes that they cannot regulate political ads, then they need to outright ban them like many other platforms have done.
