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Facebook Aligns With Conservatives: Allows Lying in Political Ads

Danielle from Leaf and Core
Reading Time: 7 minutes.

Facebook logo with red glow on dark backgroundHere’s the first of at least three Facebook articles you’re going to see on Leaf and Core over the next few days. That’s because when Facebook digs a hole, they use dynamite. Facebook is in hot water for everything from increasing hate speech on their platform in vulnerable areas, propping up far-right, racist, and anti-LGBTQ views in their new News Tab, and allowing lying in political ads. Today, we’re going to talk about the latter.

Donald Trump put out a campaign ad with absolutely false claims. These lies were directed at political rival Joe Biden. Trump, if you’ll remember, is currently the subject of an impeachment investigation for trying to solicit foreign aid in his reelection campaign, and threatening to withhold funds if they do not prop up his latest conspiracy theory. The acts are not only illegal and a violation of his oath to the United States constitution, but he has admitted to them on camera, and performed these acts in front of numerous witnesses.

Now, Trump is doubling down on those lies, and revealing hypocrisy at Facebook. The website is allowing Trump’s provably false claims to run in ads while simultaneously trying to paint Facebook as a site for reliable news. The result adds legitimacy to Trump’s false claims, and will benefit conservatives in the upcoming 2020 election.

Lying Benefits Conservatives

AP Photo/Alex Brandon

I grew up in the United States. Like many, I was taught to revere our “Founding Fathers.” They were, as I was taught, honest men, pillars of our community, and role models. I learned of George Washington, who could not tell a lie, and Honest Abe. I later learned that they nearly all had slaves, gave no rights to women, and established an oligarchy, allowing the rich to hold more political power than anyone else, which continues to this day. Still, my first view into politics was simple: the most honest, most trustworthy, and most caring politician would become president.

It didn’t take long into my interest in U.S. and world politics to find that this was, itself, a lie.

Why Lie? To Win

To the point of this subheading. Lying benefits conservatives. Trump is currently lying about (again) reaching out for foreign aid. Republicans lie about climate change (it’s real, and it’s anthropological in nature, those are facts). They lie about the economy, and the growing income gap. They lie about taxes, or the fact that LGBTQ couples make excellent parents. Don’t even get them started about the concentration camps at our borders, or the lower rates of gun violence around the world where gun control legislation isn’t written by gun manufacturers. Lies prop up their ideology. However, in order to buy into those lies, a person has to submit to a certain level of cognitive dissonance. They have to have a narrow worldview, hearing only a few voices. That’s the only way to get them to believe the lie, to distort the views of others and hide the facts in plain sight.

Because of this, the outrage over Facebook’s allowance of lies in political ads have been along party lines. This isn’t the first time this has happened. Democrats pushed during the 2016 election to feature live fact checking by independent organizations during debates. Trump and Republicans pushed back with claims of bias. But these fact checks would come from independent organizations with both liberal and conservative members. The only “bias” they’re referring to is the truth.

The Republican Position

One of Trump’s falsehood-ridden ads.

Late last month, Donald Trump spent over $1.6 million on Facebook ads that had primarily misleading or outright false claims. Many attacked current Democratic front-runner (by a shrinking margin), Joe Biden. While Facebook does some third party fact-checking, pointing out only the worst offenders, they allowed the blatant lies to stay because Facebook doesn’t fact-check political ads. In fact, Facebook only removed one ad where Trump called Joe Biden a bitch*, because swearing in ads isn’t allowed.

*We’re going to have to ignore the death of civility in politics for a few moments to discuss a more pressing issue.

Republicans have played their part. They’ve remained silent about Facebook. They’re getting what they want: a misinformed public who will support their candidate. Why change a broken system if it helps you?

Democratic Outrage

Mark Zuckerberg has not endorsed Donald Trump. But he may as well have by allowing him to lie.

Democrats, however, have not been silent. Elizabeth Warren has been critical of the company for most of her campaign. She’s looking to break up large companies like Facebook, who take advantage of their monopolies. This wouldn’t even take new legislation, it would just take enforcement of current antitrust laws. Elizabeth Warren even took out a blatantly false ad to illustrate her point, quickly pointing out that she lied in the ad to prove that it’s allowed.

“We appreciate that Twitter recognizes that they should not permit disproven smears, like those from the Trump campaign, to appear in advertisements on their platform.”

– Bill Russo, Deputy Communications Director for the Biden Campaign

The Biden Campaign, in response to Twitter’s new rules, also spoke out against Facebook’s decision to allow Trump’s lies to go unchecked. Freshman representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also spoke out, pointing out that technology has the power to undermine our democracy, and therefore has the responsibility to uphold it.

“Technology — and social media especially — has a powerful responsibility in preserving the integrity of our elections,” Ocasio-Cortez continued. “Not allowing for paid disinformation is one of the most basic, ethical decisions a company can make.”

– Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

 

International Response

British Parliament is busy right now, to say the least. An upcoming election and Brexit hang in the balance. But they’re not distracted. Damian Collins, head of the Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport Committee (DCMS) asked Facebook to change their position in an open letter, which you can read above. The U.K. has a right to be worried. Leading up to the Brexit vote, misleading ads spread on Facebook. Their goal? Make British citizens afraid of and angry with immigrants to influence them to pull out of the EU and close their borders. The ads worked. Despite potentially catastrophic economic repercussions and racist reasoning, Brexit passed.

Facebook’s Position

“Political advertising is more transparent on Facebook than anywhere else — we keep all political and issue ads in an archive so everyone can scrutinize them, and no TV or print does that. We don’t fact-check political ads. We don’t do this to help politicians, but because we think people should be able to see for themselves what politicians are saying. And if content is newsworthy, we also won’t take it down even if it would otherwise conflict with many of our standards.”

– Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook

Facebook already employs third party fact-checking through Politifact and Factcheck.org. Both independent organizations had already looked into Trumps claims and ruled them falsehoods, with no origin in fact. Despite this, and their ties to Facebook, Facebook ignored the rulings and allowed lies in ads. Facebook’s reasoning is that they should allow people to decide what is true. People overwhelmingly trust Facebook, and Trump’s followers would follow Trump even if he shot someone on 5th Avenue in New York (his claim). Facebook’s argument falls apart when confronted with reality.

Furthermore, the fact that they have the tools to apply these rules, yet refuse to do so, shows they’ve selected a side. Republicans want to lie in ads. They’re willing to pay for those ads. Facebook is willing to accept that money. Republicans won’t hold Facebook responsible for hate speech leading to genocide. Everyone gets what they want by crumbling the very foundation of our democracy: a well-informed public.

After a meeting with Donald Trump, Mark Zuckerberg announced that lying in political ads was allowed and that Donald Trump’s lies would go unchecked, though Facebook says the policy goes back to September of 2018.

Why This is Wrong

I shouldn’t have to tell you why lying is wrong, so I won’t. Instead, let’s talk about legitimacy. Facebook has become a primary source of news for many people. Most of those people skew older and more conservative. Facebook also massages the content you see. Your news feed isn’t in chronological order, as it was when Facebook started. Now it’s in an order that Facebook determines. Their algoritm elevates stories that are likely to cause controversy, keeping people arguing on the site, or content you’re most likely to share. This does two things. First, it creates ideological bubbles, where you mostly see news that conforms to your worldview. Next, it creates partisan controversy. That controversy usually comes in the form of fake news, which, should come as no surprise, is mostly far-right. In fact, on multiple occasions, Facebook has allowed hate speech and fake news on their platform specifically to appease Republicans and cause controversy.

Facebook’s already promoting far-right and partisan news sources to stir up controversy and drive people to stay on Facebook. Basically, far-right politics and fake news are profitable. Therefore, Facebook sees no reason to stop this. One could argue they’ve lost a majority of their younger users and their business model has an expiration date now, but that’s for Facebook’s executives to ignore as they get their massive payouts.

However, those ideological bubbles do something else. They cause people to find comfort in reading news on Facebook. It makes them comfortable and trusting of Facebook as the platform. They don’t think about the individual sites they find themselves linked to, instead, they think of Facebook as the source of their news. Polls repeatedly show this. What is Facebook doing with the trust they’re given? They allow false political ads because, right now, conservatives help Facebook more than liberals, and they want to lie in ads.

Facebook got Donald Trump elected with falsehoods largely initiated and spread by Russians. Now they’re changing policies to help him get reelected.

What’s Next?

I think you know where this is going. But you’re likely wrong. The truth is, you can’t completely delete your Facebook account. No matter what you do, Facebook maintains a so-called “shadow profile” on you for advertising purposes. Facebook has targeting data they can one day sell or use if you ever return to their service. Even if you just use Facebook for Messenger and group chats with Android users, your messages are still used for targeting. Even if you’ve never used Facebook, this profile likely exists.

You could mess with Facebook. You could flood it with strange posts and misinformation, but that’s not going to do a whole lot. The best thing you can do to protest this is simply not use the Facebook or Instagram apps. Perhaps use them only for chat. However, Facebook could just add ads to chat. Good luck finding a new platform to take all of your friends to for group chats and socializing. Facebook owns Instagram and WhatsApp too.

So perhaps you didn’t realize where this was going. There’s one thing we can do. We need to break up Facebook. Americans need to support politicians who want to put restrictions on Facebook, like not allowing political ads to feature lies, holding them to standards for hate speech, or, perhaps most importantly, allowing users to delete profiles and not keeping “shadow profiles” on non-users. We could enforce something the EU has, the “Right to be Forgotten.” These laws state that you have a right to your own data, and you can completely delete it from a service or even forbid them from keeping it longer than a few months.

These measures would encourage competition and freedom. They’d ensure people are well informed. That they aren’t mislead or constantly fearful of other people. It would stamp out hate.

Can you guess which political party opposes such measures, and which one supports them?

Good. Now vote.

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