Facebook is allowing politicians to lie on its platform. Demand Facebook restore bans on political misinformation and hateful messaging!
Facebook just reopened the Pandora's box of voter suppression and misinformation, giving Trump the green light to spread lies, hate, and election misinformation on its platform. Under Facebook's extraordinarily reckless new "Trump Exemption" policy, politicians' posts and advertisements are exempt from the platform’s rules.1
This change is already being exploited by the Trump campaign, which is running more than $1 million of Facebook ads a week, pushing conspiracy theories to deflect from Trump’s impeachment inquiry, and demonizing migrant communities.
With the 2020 election cycle already in full swing, there is no room for politicians’ misinformation and voter suppression efforts on the world’s largest social media platform. The 2016 election already showed how Facebook can be exploited to target Black voters for suppression and promote white nationalist propaganda.2,3 This exemption does nothing more than give free license to Trump and the politicians with the most to gain from silencing our voices to spread misinformation.
When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified in Congress last year, he admitted he was at fault for not protecting Facebook users against fake news, foreign interference in elections, and hate speech. And just last month, Color Of Change led dozens of advocates in the civil rights and Black tech communities in a town hall convening with Facebook senior leadership to address curbing misinformation and voter suppression on the platform ahead of the 2020 elections.4 Yet Facebook still made the decision to enact this dangerous policy, which contradicts the commitments the company has made to Congress and Color Of Change. Including recent commitments Facebook made to Color Of Change and other civil rights leaders at Civil Rights x Tech townhall late last month.
Facebook continues to pretend it is neutral in all this, but in the moral arc of history, it will be considered critically responsible for the normalization of politics that are harmful to Black people. As Trump expands his misinformation machine, Facebook executives like Vice President Nick Clegg continue to allow the company's powerful right-wing staff to make the company's policies increasingly friendly toward Trump. While Zuckerberg himself was just revealed to be secretly hosting far-right peddlers of white nationalist propaganda and misinformation like Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro in private, off-the-record dinners in his homes.5 This is no coincidence.
Facebook’s commitment to protecting Black voters and protecting our elections is called into serious question when some of its most important decision makers on election policy include former senior official in the George W. Bush White House and Brett Kavanaugh supporter Joel Kaplan, as well as former Rudy Giuliani staffer and Republican election consultant Katie Harbath. Facebook’s lax attitude toward blatant misinformation and its willingness to appease Trump are threats to our democracy and election security.
Under the Trump exemption, Facebook will allow Trump and any other politician to run ads misinforming Black voters about how and when they can vote, promote blatant white nationalist propaganda, and use fearmongering to push Black and migrant communities not to participate in the critically important 2020 Census. By enacting this policy, Facebook is not only denying that voter suppression is a problem on the platform but also openly welcoming it.
The stakes are too high for the Trump exemption to stand. Politicians cannot lie and misinform the public with impunity. If Facebook wants to show the civil rights community that it is committed to fighting voter suppression and election interference, it must immediately drop the Trump exemption and ensure that all politicians follow the same rules as every other user regarding content and advertisements.
Demand that Facebook immediately restore the bans on hate and misinformation from politicians!
Until justice is real,
Jade, Rashad, Arisha, Johnny, Amanda, Evan, Future, Eesha, Samantha, Marcus, FolaSade, and the rest of the Color Of Change team
References: 1. “Facebook Says Trump Can Lie in His Facebook Ads,” Popular Information, October 3, 2019, 2. “Did Fake News on Facebook Help Elect Trump? Here’s What We Know,” NPR, April 11, 2018, 3. “Russian Trolls Tried to Convince African Americans Not to Vote in 2016, US Senate Says,” CNBC, October 9, 2019, 4. “Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg Hears Concerns of Civil Rights Leaders but Offers No Promises,” Gizmodo, September 26, 2019, 5. “Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s Private Meetings with Conservative Pundits,”, Politico, October 14, 2010,
https://act.colorofchange.org/go/202799?t=10&akid=38100%2E4731121%2Ea1yvBC
https://act.colorofchange.org/go/202800?t=12&akid=38100%2E4731121%2Ea1yvBC
https://act.colorofchange.org/go/200865?t=14&akid=38100%2E4731121%2Ea1yvBC
https://act.colorofchange.org/go/202801?t=16&akid=38100%2E4731121%2Ea1yvBC
https://act.colorofchange.org/go/202802?t=18&akid=38100%2E4731121%2Ea1yvBC
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