By: Elizabeth West
In March, Facebook announced that they would lift its ban on political advertising, instituted in the wake of the U.S. presidential election. Since November 3rd, 2020, Facebook has banned political advertisements on its platform, citing the move as an attempt to “avoid confusion or abuse following Election Day.” Google, a Facebook rival, similarly instituted a political ad ban after the election. Google initially lifted its ban on December 10th, then reinstated it following the January 6th attacks on the United States Capitol.
Facebook cited its goals in instituting the ban as an attempt to “avoid confusion or abuse following Election Day.” The company emphasized its system requirements of authorization and transparency in ads concerning political and social issues, and reiterated commitments to “take a closer look at how these ads work on our service to see where further changes may be merited.”
Political advertising on social media platforms has long faced criticism for promoting falsehoods, spreading misinformation, and inflaming voters. Politicians and executives alike have been vocal critics of political advertising on Facebook. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D – MA) accused the social media giant of being a “disinformation-for-profit machine,” while Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said the social network “needs to be held accountable for propaganda on its platform.” These critiques come at a time where regulators are examining whether or not to intervene in the company’s operation.
Despite these criticisms, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (“Zuckerberg”) has defended the company as a “champion of free speech and democracy.” In public speeches, Zuckerberg has continued to emphasize that Facebook provides a voice to the people. Zuckerberg has, in the past, denounced calls for regulation, saying that critics who called for the network to act as an “arbiter of speech” were “setting a bad example.”
In addition to general critiques about Facebook’s management of its platform and free speech issues, the way in which the political ad bans were instituted have garnered public criticism. Some critics of the ban state that it hurts more than it helps, prohibiting political campaigns from reaching their target audiences, hindering their ability to reach unregistered voters, and preventing smaller campaigns from raising campaign funds online. Additionally, Facebook faces criticism that its ban did little to combat the spread of political misinformation.
For instance, the Facebook ad ban only applied to ads submitted after October 27th, 2020. Furthermore, political advertisers were still able to front-load their ad buys on Facebook before the ban went into effect, allowing them to run until Election Day. The timing of the ban also drew sharp criticism, with an unprecedented number of early voters due to the COVID-19 pandemic who were already exposed to potentially false or misleading ads at the time they voted. To critics, the ban was too little, too late, preventing those early voters from making an informed decision.
Facebook’s decision to lift the ad ban, announced on March 3rd, 2021, comes the same day that the Democratic Party’s House and Senate campaign arms released a joint statement calling for its abolishment. The statement read, “[t]his reckless and haphazard policy has made it harder for campaigns and organizations that do provide accurate information to voters and engage with them in good faith, and it hinders communities of color in particular from fully participating in the democratic process.”
The ad ban and Facebook’s recent decision to lift it have drawn criticisms from both sides of the aisle. Facebook is no stranger to free speech controversies: the company cracked down on QAnon conspiracy posts just last year. While the spread of misinformation on social media is a rampant and potentially dangerous problem, many of the critiques are valid, but what did the ban actually accomplish? With many ads promoting misinformation circulating widely on Facebook before the election, and with the ability for large groups of like-minded people to spread misinformation on platforms like Parler, many wonder what Facebook has learned from their recent actions.
Facebook claims that it will now require advertisers to go through an authorization process, which includes “paid for by” disclosures. Is this enough? Has anything really changed?
Student Bio: Elizabeth West is a second-year law student at Suffolk University Law School. She is a staffer on the Journal of High Technology Law. Elizabeth graduated summa cum laude from The University of Massachusetts Boston with a degree in History.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog are the views of the author alone and do not represent the views of JHTL or Suffolk University Law School.
