Facebook to politicians: Go ahead and lie to voters—just keep paying Facebook. The social media giant announced new political advertising policies Thursday, and it will still allow false and deceptive political ads.
Facebook’s official position is that free-speech rights extend to paying a private platform for the ability to lie to millions of people and that voters should be able to see for themselves if politicians are lying—because most people definitely have the time and energy to research the facts behind every Facebook ad they see. But realistically, Facebook makes money on these ads, Mark Zuckerberg has been hanging out with Donald Trump a lot, and cracking down on lies would have the party most reliant on lies screaming about bias.
The damage here isn’t only in Trump’s lies. Ilyse Hogue, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, pointed out on Twitter, “Facebook's decision to stay their course on political lies means that medical disinformation and anti-choice propaganda will jeopardize even more women's lives and threaten our democratic freedoms.”
Facebook will also continue to allow microtargeting, which Google has sharply limited. Twitter has banned all political advertising. Facebook has claimed that it supports regulation of political ads online, but, predictably, a bill doing just that passed the House but hasn’t gotten a vote in the Republican-controlled Senate.