• by Karlene Lukovitz , November 13, 2020

In decisions being positioned as attempts to tamp down some of the misinformation about the national election results being spread on their platforms, Facebook and Google are extending their bans on political advertising.

But if their aim was to minimize more political fallout for their companies, it has already backfired.

Facebook, which began its ban following the end of the November 3 election, said in an update on Wednesday that it expects to extend it for another month, though there “may be an opportunity to resume these ads sooner.”

Google has not publicly declared the length of its extension, but told advertisers it is likely to last at least through the end of the year, according to The Wall Street Journal. (Twitter banned all political ads starting in October 2019.)

The extensions mean that neither party can run political ads, of course — and some Republicans are expressing anger at the moves' implications for the runoff elections for two Georgia Senate seats scheduled for January 5, whose outcomes will determine control of the Senate. .

"Facebook's temporary pause on ads is a breach of First Amendment rights," Jesse Hunt of the National Republican Senatorial Committee said in a statement.  "The lack of transparency on when ads will resume and the timing of it could not be worse."

However, Republicans spent much less than Democrats on Facebook ads leading up to the national election, noted CBS News. Georgia Senator David Perdue, who will face off with Democrat Jon Ossoff in the runoff, spent about $233,000 total on Facebook, and Senator Kelly Loeffler, who will face off with Democrat Raphael Warnock, spent just over half a million. Ossoff and Warnock each spent about $2 million on Facebook ads.

Democrats spent more because they have more to gain. They are now calling foul on the ad ban because even Facebook’s own research has shown that, on average, advertising on the platform gives a proportional advantage to challengers against incumbents.

“With just 55 days until the runoff elections in Georgia and critically important deadlines coming up for voters, Facebook and Google’s plans to extend their ban on political ads are unacceptable,” wrote Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) Executive Director Scott Fairchild on the organization’s site. “Organic disinformation is the actual problem on these platforms, and continuing to ban ads is now actively harmful to organizations working to inform Georgia’s diverse voters about the January runoffs. These ad bans are voter suppression plain and simple, they directly benefit Republican senators, and at a minimum there should be an exemption for ads in Georgia over the next two months."

"The continued ban on political ads disproportionately hurts the Ossoff and Warnock campaign outreach efforts — a benefit to both Senators Loeffler and Perdue," he continued. "Given the unusual timing of the runoff election, campaigns will have to do more voter outreach and mobilization than ever before to ensure Georgians know how and when to vote.” 

In a tweet about the Warnock versus Loeffler race, Tim Tagaris, former digital fundraising director for Bernie Sanders, declared: “There is no replacing missed high-leverage moments in online fundraising, and ads are a HUGE part of that. Every day Facebook and Google wait to turn ads back on they cost [Warnock] a huge number of donations AND volunteers. A big gift to self-funding Kelly Loeffler.”

While Facebook and Instagram are also continuing various measures which Facebook executives say are meant to counter election misinformation, the inadequacy of those efforts — and Facebook’s refusal to outright acknowledge Joe Biden’s presidential victory — are also infuriating Democrats.

The Facebook labels being appended to candidate posts continue to state that Biden is the “projected” winner, and an email sent this week to the campaigns’ operatives by Facebook advertising reps stated: “Given the ongoing conversation about the US presidential election, we’re continuing to temporarily pause all social issues, electoral or political ads in the US.”

That quote was tweeted out by Mega Clasen, senior paid media advisor for Biden, along with a long list of the credible news outlets that declared the Biden victory back on December 7.

In a tweet thread, Rob Leathern, Facebook’s director of product management, repeated the company’s assertion that the ban extension is part of its “election protection” efforts, and also claimed: “We do not have the technical ability in the short term to enable political ads by state or by advertiser, and we are also committed to giving political advertisers equal access to our tools and services.”

“If Facebook and Google are truly incapable of reviewing and safely running Georgia Senate ads without opening the floodgates of paid disinformation across their platforms, it’s a damning indictment of their own business model,” Nicole Gill, executive director of tech policy advocacy group Accountable Tech, said in a statement. “These companies are already failing to curb the viral spread of conspiracy theories designed to delegitimize our elections. As has always been the case, deceptive organic content — boosted by toxic algorithms – continues to drive social media’s disinformation crisis; not paid content. Preventing campaigns from running ads to inform Georgians about how and why to participate in these critical runoff elections is actively harmful to democracy.”

In tweets, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) agreed, bashing  Facebook’s “unwillingness” to regulate ads and “inability to control organic disinformation on their platform — which they’re now letting run wild during a critical moment for our democracy.” Warren also tweeted a ranking of the top-performing Facebook links in the past 24 hours (above), showing nine of 10 relating to Trump, pro-Trump news networks, and Trump supporters.  

Meanwhile, on Thursday, Facebook Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg finally acknowledged Joe Biden’s election — albeit in an internal meeting, rather than on the company’s platforms. 

“I believe the outcome of the election is now clear and Joe Biden is going to be our next president,” Zuckerberg said in audio of the meeting, reports BuzzFeed News. “It's important that people have confidence that the election was fundamentally fair, and that goes for the tens of millions of people that voted for Trump.”

In the same meeting, Zuckerberg insisted that recently indicted former Trump strategist Steve Bannon’s suggestion on Facebook Live that infectious disease expert/pandemic task force member Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Christopher Wray should be beheaded was not an egregious enough violation of policy to shut down his account (although the video itself was removed).

All of which — along with Facebook’s several earlier run-ins with Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders — would not seem to bode well for the company’s relationship with the incoming administration, as both parties in Congress continue to call for regulation changes or outright breakups for the tech platform giants.

Zuckerberg tried to allay employees' concerns, saying that Facebook and the Biden team “worry about the same issues,” including Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects  platforms from liability for users’ content; online encryption; and climate change, reports BuzzFeed. “We will find ways to hopefully work together,” he added.