With the election only one week away, Facebook appears to be taking its self-proclaimed role of truth-guardian even more seriously.
Facebook, starting today, has frozen political ads until Election Day, when it plans to block all political ads on the platform, according to The Washington Post.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined the new rules in a September 3 post, saying: “We're going to block new political and issue ads during the final week of the campaign. It's important that campaigns can run get out the vote campaigns, and I generally believe the best antidote to bad speech is more speech, but in the final days of an election there may not be enough time to contest new claims. So in the week before the election, we won't accept new political or issue ads.”
Zuckerberg continued: “Advertisers will be able to continue running ads they started running before the final week and adjust the targeting for those ads, but those ads will already be published transparently in our Ads Library so anyone, including fact-checkers and journalists, can scrutinize them.”
In the months leading up to the election, Facebook has continually piled on to its list of rules regarding election ads, initially claiming that it would only combat misinformation, voter suppression, or the incitement of violence.
The Post pointed out: “It could also be a boon for other tech companies that will continue to accept ads this week. Google, which owns YouTube, is still accepting ads through Election Day.”
Facebook’s obsession with protecting users from what it deems to be misinformation is nothing new. In fact, the platform recently added a new level to its censorship policies by establishing an Oversight Board, which began accepting cases for review just last week. The social networking platform even censored an article from the satire site The Babylon Bee, a member of the Free Speech Alliance. The Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon said in a tweet that Facebook claimed that the article headlined “Senator Hirono Demands ACB Be Weighed Against A Duck To See If She Is A Witch” “incites violence.”
Conservatives are under attack. Contact Facebook headquarters at 1-650-308-7300 and Twitter at (415) 222-9670 and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on “hate speech” and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
