Facebook Not Taking Control Over Lies in Political Ads

    With the upcoming election, Congress has been pressuring Facebook to take control of political campaign advertisements. Political campaigns have been targeting different advertisements towards voters that may or may not be truthful. Facebook is one of the most popular platforms when it comes to political ads and they will not make a change in what is and is not allowed even though other tech companies are making changes.

Facebook is likely to be criticized for this decision. Liberal critics are wanting facebook to do a better job at monitoring their various social media platforms while conservatives claim that their "views are being unfairly muzzled". Many questions have been asked as to what political content should be allowed and not allowed across various popular technology companies. Both Twitter and Google have already taken action in fixing the political advertisement issue.

Facebook takes in a large amount of money from political campaigns. The Trump administration alone has spent more than $27 million on the platform alone. The administration also supported Facebook's decision of not interfering or face-checking political ads. In October, the Trump campaign made false accusations in an ad that Facebook refused to remove. When the Biden campaign asked for the removal of the head, the company's head of global elections policy, Katie Harbath, responded with "Our approach is grounded in Facebook's fundamental belief in free expression, respect for the democratic process and the belief that, in mature democracies with a free press, political speech is already arguably scrutinized speech there is". In a speech made in October, CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a similar speech that included his beliefs in the power of free speech, including paid advertising, and had no intention of regulating any political ads. While nothing huge will be done in regards to policing political ads, Facebook did decide to add a feature that will limit campaign and political issues.

As a young person who is using social media platforms daily and for long amounts of time, the issue of monitoring political ads and campaigns is one I am in favor of. While everyone is entitled to free speech, there should be a way to completely block out seeing false advertisements that are showing up in my social media stream. With the upcoming election being the first time my peers and I will be voting, I find it very worrisome that false ads could skew their decision without them even realizing it. False advertisements and fake news are becoming more of a problem daily and I believe Facebook should be doing more.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/09/technology/facebook-political-ads-lies.html