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The Plain View
On May 4, a group of disaffected Republicans known as the Lincoln Project posted an ad on Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. Inspired by Ronald Reagan’s classic 1984 “Morning in America” ad, the Lincoln Project’s “Mourning in America” recited a litany of grim statistics with depressing images of pandemic America, laying the blame on President Trump. The president was not happy, attacking the ad that very evening.
A day later, Facebook labeled the ad “partly false,” rejected it as inappropriate, and dramatically depressed its circulation when users tried to share the video for free.
If you have been following Mark Zuckerberg’s statements on political advertising, this might seem puzzling. Despite criticism, he has articulated a public policy of not filtering or even fact-checking political advertisements on the platform. It’s up to users to decide the truth for themselves. “I don’t think that a private company should be censoring politicians or news,” he told Gayle King on CBS.
So why did Facebook refuse to run “Mourning in America” as an ad, and bury it otherwise?
The reason, explains Facebook spokesperson Andrew Stone, is that the Lincoln Project is not an ad from a campaigning politician, but an outside organization. If candidates for public office pay Facebook to circulate even demonstrably false claims, Facebook will happily place it in the News Feeds of a targeted audience. But if the advertiser is not running for office, Facebook will append a scarlet letter to ads identified as making exaggerated claims and misstatements.
But wait: The “Mourning” ad seems accurate. Online critics wondered whether Facebook—whose handling of misinformation in the 2016 election seemed to benefit the Trump campaign—was doing the White House a favor in censoring the Lincoln ad.
The truth is not so nefarious but not terribly comforting,
