Facebook again refuses to ban political ads, even false ones



These steps appear unlikely to assuage critics — including politicians, activists, tech competitors and some of the company's own rank-and-file employees — who say that Facebook has too much power and that social media is warping democracy and undermining elections.


“Today’s announcement is more window dressing around their decision to allow paid misinformation," said Bill Russo, a campaign spokesman for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.



Facebook has repeatedly insisted it won't fact-check political ads. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has argued that “political speech is important” and that Facebook doesn't want to interfere with it. Critics say that stance gives politicians a license to lie.

TV stations and networks aren't required to fact-check ads either, but social media gives candidates a certain advantage: the ability to “microtarget" their ads.



Under Google's policy, candidates would be free to show immigration ads next to immigration-related stories only; they wouldn't be able to show ads to just Democrats or Republicans, or target people specifically interested in immigration when they're reading about baseball or Beyonce.


Jason Kint, CEO of Digital Content Next, a trade group that represents digital publishers, said Google's ban on microtargeting is much better than Facebook's permissive stance. Making sure ads reach a wider, more diverse group of people can enable the public and the press to see, debate and correct claims in them, he said.

“Sunlight is the best disinfectant,” he said.



Facebook does plan to let users choose to see fewer political and social-issue ads, although it won't let people exclude them entirely. It's also going to let people choose whether or not to see ads, political or otherwise, from advertisers that target them using their contact details, such as email address or phone number.

The company is also tweaking its ad library so people can search for exact phrases and limit results using filters such as dates and regions reached. Facebook's ad library currently lets anyone find out how much was spent on an ad, how many times it was seen, and the age, gender and location of the people who saw it.



Sam Jeffers, co-founder of Who Targets Me, an advocacy group researching political advertising, also said individual companies shouldn't be deciding whether to allow political ads and what limits to set.

“It shouldn’t be up to Facebook to decide what a lie is or isn’t," he said. “It should be up to journalism and other forms of accountability.”



