U.S. Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) is pressing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to reverse a policy allowing politicians and elected officials to run demonstrably false advertisements on the platform.
“The public nature of broadcast television, radio, print, cable, and satellite ensured a level of accountability for traditional political advertisements. In addition to being broadly accessible to the electorate, these communications are accessible to the press, fact-checkers, and political opponents through media monitoring services that track broadcast content across television and radio markets. As a result, strong disincentives exist for a candidate to disseminate materially false, inflammatory, or contradictory messages to the public,” the Senator wrote in a letter to Zuckerberg, sent late last evening. “By contrast, social media platforms tout their ability to target portions of the electorate with direct, ephemeral advertisements—often on the basis of private information the platform has on individual users, facilitating political advertisements that are contradictory, racially or socially inflammatory, or materially false, without the same constraints as more traditional communications mediums, and without affording opposing candidates an equal opportunity to respond directly in front of the same targeted audience.”
“In making strides not to continue contributing to the coarsening of our political debate, and the undermining of our public institutions, at a minimum, Facebook should at least adhere to the same norms of other traditional media companies when it comes to political advertising. In defending its refusal to remove false political advertisements by candidates, Facebook has pointed to provisions of the Communications Act that prohibit broadcast licensees from rejecting or modifying candidate ads, regardless of their accuracy. This comparison is inapt. Broadcast licensees face legal requirements to run these ads – in addition to a range of other obligations – as a condition of holding federal spectrum licenses. The prohibition to reject or modify the ad accompanies a statutory obligation to air ads of qualified federal candidates in the first place,” Sen. Warner concluded. “A more appropriate comparison for a platform like Facebook would be cable networks, which (like Facebook) face no such prohibition on rejecting demonstrably false advertisements from political candidates – nor are they bound by related obligations such as rules on advertising rates and reasonable access requirements. Therefore, the industry norms Facebook should heed would more aptly be those followed by not by local broadcasters, but by cable networks. Notably, CNN refused to air the same demonstrably false ad Facebook allowed the Trump campaign to run. To the extent Facebook takes inspiration from the norms of local broadcasters, it should likewise require that candidates provide documented substantial of claims made in their advertisements.”
Sen. Warner also posed a series of questions seeking to clarify and define the Facebook policy, including:
- Under this policy, how is Facebook defining “politician”? What steps have you taken to prevent abuse of this definition?
- Mr. Nick Clegg, Facebook’s VP of Global Affairs, has noted that this policy has exceptions for speech which “can lead to real-world violence and harm” or “endangers people.” How is Facebook defining these terms?
- Unlike online intermediaries like Facebook, traditional media outlets can be sued for defamation for the advertisements they run. Because of this, traditional media outlets have generally adopted norms of refusing to run advertisements with clear falsehoods, and of taking down ads where an opposing campaign or fact-checking organization has shown an ad to be false. Would a regulatory regime establishing greater parity in liability between Facebook and traditional media outlets serve to simplify Facebook’s policies in this sphere?
- Will you commit to provide ad targeting information, as required under the Honest Ads Act, to better allow opposing campaigns to “correct the record” in responding to potentially misleading ads?
Sen. Warner has written and introduced a series of bipartisan bills designed to protect consumers and reduce the power of giant social media platforms like Facebook. The Designing Accounting Safeguards to Help Broaden Oversight And Regulations on Data (DASHBOARD) Act, bipartisan legislation with Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), will require data harvesting companies such as social media platforms to tell consumers and financial regulators exactly what data they are collecting from consumers, and how it is being leveraged by the platform for profit.
The Deceptive Experiences To Online Users Reduction (DETOUR) Act, bipartisan legislation with Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE), will prohibit large online platforms from using deceptive user interfaces, known as “dark patterns” to trick consumers into handing over their personal data. The Honest Ads Act, bipartisan legislation with Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) will help prevent foreign interference in future elections and improve the transparency of online political advertisements.
The Augmenting Compatibility and Competition by Enabling Service Switching (ACCESS) Act, bipartisan legislation with Sen. Hawley and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), will encourage market-based competition to dominant social media platforms by requiring the largest companies to make user data portable – and their services interoperable – with other platforms, and to allow users to designate a trusted third-party service to manage their privacy and account settings, if they so choose.
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Chris Graham
