(Reuters) - Facebook Inc said on Saturday that it had removed an ad which falsely claimed that U.S. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham supported the Green New Deal, demonstrating that it will fact-check ads from political groups but not politicians.
The ad, which ran on Friday, was put up as a stunt by a left-leaning Political Action Committee, or PAC, called The Really Online Lefty League, to test Facebook’s political ad policies.
Facebook has been criticized in recent weeks over its decision to not fact-check ads run by politicians, drawing ire from Democratic candidates running in the 2020 presidential election such as former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Elizabeth Warren.
Last week, Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg defended Facebook’s policy, saying that the company did not want to stifle political speech.
Facebook spokesman Tom Channick told Reuters on Friday that since the new ad came from a political action group, rather than a politician, it was eligible for review by the company’s third-party fact-checking partners.
At the time of writing, the video could still be viewed on the PAC’s Facebook page, but paid distribution had been stopped.
The ad came days after Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez grilled Zuckerberg on whether Facebook would permit her to run such an ad, during a congressional hearing on Wednesday.
Adriel Hampton, treasurer of The Really Online Lefty League, said the Graham ad was inspired by the exchange.
Senator Graham’s office said on Friday that it was aware of the ad and confirmed the senator opposes the Green New Deal, a proposal championed by Ocasio-Cortez that would eliminate U.S. greenhouse gas emissions within a decade.
Facebook and other social media companies are under pressure to police misinformation on their platforms during the run-up to the November 2020 election.
On Friday, Facebook started to test Facebook News, a new section of its mobile app dedicated to “high-quality news.” But the company came under fire from some political activists over its decision to include right-wing news website Breitbart News as one of its Facebook News publishers.
FILE PHOTO: U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham holds a news conference to discuss his plans to introduce a Senate resolution condeming the Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives impeachment inquiry into U.S. President Donald Trump as "illegitimate" at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., October 24, 2019. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko
Facebook said that Breitbart is an unpaid partner, unlike some outlets in the section. Breitbart News did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Facebook News will feature content from almost 200 publishers including the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post.
A Facebook spokeswoman told Reuters that if any Facebook News publisher posts misinformation, the publisher would no longer be eligible for Facebook News.
mahanahan on October 27th, 2019 at 10:42 UTC »
"Republican Graham" is one of the most awkward and weird sounding ways to refer to a politician that I've ever come across.
USA_A-OK on October 27th, 2019 at 10:10 UTC »
Let's please just get rid of PACs
Be-Right-Back on October 27th, 2019 at 09:05 UTC »
This ad was deliberately meant to force Facebook to show their hand. If the ad stayed up, it showed that misinformation was going to be allowed. Now that it had been removed from distribution it has set a precedent for future ads going forward which was the whole point.
The problem is that this was widely acknowledged to be deliberate misinformation to get a response. I worry that in the future less obvious ads will not recieve the same treatment and that Facebook will allow complete falsehoods until it gets enough media coverage. If they are not fact checking these ads BEFORE they are distributed, then there is nothing to stop hundreds or thousands of new PACs from popping up and disseminating lies before they get removed. This whole thing is a shitshow that could be easily solved by just banning political ads but god forbid Facebook takes an ethical approach when there is money to be made.