Facebook Approves Trump Ads That Violate Its Pre-Election Rules 102
Judd Legum, reporting at Popular Information: In September, Facebook announced that it would stop accepting new political ads starting October 27. From October 27 through Election Day on November 3, political groups are permitted to run, subject to limitations, Facebook ads approved and running before October 27. In October, Facebook announced that after the polls close, it would ban all political ads indefinitely. The purpose of that policy is to prevent a campaign from declaring victory prematurely. Both policies were part of a high-profile effort to convince the public that the company was taking election integrity seriously. But on the first day of the moratorium, Facebook approved numerous Trump ads that appeared to violate its pre-election policies. At the same time, Facebook rejected scores of ads, many from groups aligned with Democrats, that do not violate its rules. Popular Information contacted Facebook regarding Trump's ads early Tuesday afternoon. Several hours later, Facebook told Popular Information that some of the ads did violate its policies and hundreds of Trump's ads were taken down.
The Trump campaign produced a number of ads that said "Election Day is Today." These ads violate Facebook's policies. Why? In order to comply with the moratorium, the ads need to begin delivering impressions prior to October 27. The Trump campaign spent a small amount of money delivering these ads to Facebook users in Ohio and elsewhere. But, while early voting has started in many states, it is not Election Day anywhere. These ads should not have been approved because they violate Faceboo's policy against misrepresenting the date of the election.
The Trump campaign produced a number of ads that said "Election Day is Today." These ads violate Facebook's policies. Why? In order to comply with the moratorium, the ads need to begin delivering impressions prior to October 27. The Trump campaign spent a small amount of money delivering these ads to Facebook users in Ohio and elsewhere. But, while early voting has started in many states, it is not Election Day anywhere. These ads should not have been approved because they violate Faceboo's policy against misrepresenting the date of the election.
Money talks... (Score:2)
I'll ignore the rules if you pay me... (Facebook)
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Never attribute to malice....that which can be explained by lazy greed. Human moderation is limited to the lowest bidder, if a human was even involved at the beginning.
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It does seem odd, though, that they accepted ads from one party that violated their rules, but rejected ads from the other side.
If it was just "money talks," you'd think that they would have accepted both ads (since both were paid).
Re:Money talks... (Score:5, Informative)
Your reply would make more sense to GP. They're rejecting ads and accepting ads haphazardly like a company that spends next to no money on human moderation - with inconsistent application of policies. The greed is in saving money on moderation, not allowing any/all ads.
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Okay, so which is it?
On the one hand I'm being told that Facebook has a massive political bias and censors anything that doesn't agree with its politics. So that appears to mean Facebook is pro-Trump. Section 230 protection must be removed to correct this, presumably by giving the Democrats an opportunity to sue for having their messages blocked.
On the other hand I'm being told that Facebook is just incompetent and we can't read anything into this.
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Could be, but I'm still interested in this apparent right wing pro-Trump bias at Facebook.
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Or there again, they could consider ads that say "today is election day" as not being political, simply spending their last campaign cash on reminders to people to go vote.
TFS says "The Trump campaign produced a number of ads that said "Election Day is Today.".
They don't link to the ads, so I don't know if they have "and vote Trump" all over them or not.
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Since they're required to start posting the ad on 10/27, it would be election misinformation. Today is not election day. Lying about election day is certainly political.
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Or there again, they could consider ads that say "today is election day" as not being political...
Except when you read the article [popular.info], they specifically made the point that facebook stated "today is election day" ads were not acceptable.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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That is the problem with not consuming mainstream news. If you are not a target audience you won't even notice or care what they do, and they in turn won't cater to you. For better or worse the main stream audience of news is extremely right wing, which is why the biggest and most mainstream of the new channels (Fox News) is unashamidly biased.
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us supreme court will just give the vote to trump (Score:2, Insightful)
us supreme court will just give the vote to trump
Re: us supreme court will just give the vote to tr (Score:2)
It depends on if there is standing for them to hear a case. If it is not clear which part of the Constitutional is the problem, like if Biden wins in a landslide, then SCOTUS would likely refuse to hear it. And a lower Court's ruling would be upheld.
Of course with enough conservative federal judges in the lower courts, just about anything is possible. But really your scenario seems unlikely to me.
landslide in pop vote but not in Electoral vote (Score:2)
landslide in pop vote but not in Electoral vote and you just need to get rulings voiding mail in votes in a few key states to flip them.
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I don't really care about the popular vote, at least not until the threshold for the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is met.
If the electoral college is a landslide for one candidate or another, I very much doubt the Supreme Court would hear a case. If it's a close election, it may boil down to how states count the mail-in ballots. That is likely to go in Trump's favor under a conservative court that interprets the Constitution and precedent in a certain way, and doesn't consider the potential for d
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Because who cares about State's rights, right? You can be sure Republicans will be all out to have the Federal government dictate to the state governments how to count ballots.
Anyone who claims to be a "constitutionalist" or "con
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Anyone who claims to be a "constitutionalist" or "constructionist" on the Supreme Court clearly is not.
The people that identify as constitutionalist often pick and choose what they like from it, basically they're hypocrites. You can't stop reading once you run into an Amendment that sounds good. The lack of a holistic interpretation of the Constitution by our courts and our representatives is a very serious issue bound to lead to further crisis in our [indirect, representative] democracy.
Re: landslide in pop vote but not in Electoral vot (Score:2)
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Based on this, such judges will be very unlikely to just jump into an election and decide who won unless there is some obvious question of law to settle. Please bring me with you next time you go home to your alternate universe where Bush v. Gore never happened.
Bush v Gore was a question of law. The question was about if the FL courts had followed the law or not when they ordered more and more recounts even after the election was officially and legally certified and over. All that the Supreme Court did was stop the madness, uphold the already certified results in FL and end the dispute. The decision was 7-2 so it wasn't even a close question in the end.
I know folks want to believe this was a partisan decision, that the courts somehow cheated Gore out of his pres
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It's pretty simple, bobbied. A couple critical Republican-run states will claim issues with mail-in ballots (take your pick from fraud, missed deadlines, envelopes not signed and sealed correctly, and mismatching signatures) and have their electors vote for Trump without having counted all votes. Whether they can legally do it goes to the now very partisan SCOTUS where there will be no recusals and they will quickly decide in Trump's favor.
Kavanaugh has already outlined his inclinations in this regard, bo
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It's pretty simple, bobbied. A couple critical Republican-run states will claim issues with mail-in ballots (take your pick from fraud, missed deadlines, envelopes not signed and sealed correctly, and mismatching signatures) and have their electors vote for Trump without having counted all votes. Whether they can legally do it goes to the now very partisan SCOTUS where there will be no recusals and they will quickly decide in Trump's favor.
Kavanaugh has already outlined his inclinations in this regard, both in his 2000 interview and his most recent reasoning on the Wisconsin case. ACB is neither impartial nor well-qualified/experienced. Her hasty installation by the GOP is explicitly for her to decide on the Republican agenda, one item of which shall be the election results.
Your idyllic view of the court is outdated and naive.
So, as your theory goes, somebody is going to invent some controversy over balloting, which just so happens to represent enough electoral votes to make a difference? I don't support Biden at all, but the polling is clearly showing that we have a very slim chance of this being close enough for there to be much controversy. This isn't going to be close, short of Biden going out and announcing the support of the Arian Brotherhood and the personal endorsement of Putin at the same time.
Your exaptation of the
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I'm not worried about my vote or my state, I'm worried about critical swing states where the election will be very tight and a handful of votes will matter. The only way we're going to avoid a legal battle is if there is a landslide win and any legal battle is likely to be argued all the way up to SCOTUS given how much is on the line and how contentious politics are now.
You act like I'm making this up but Trump has been floating the idea for quite some time and members of the Republican party as well as Ka
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So, the most recent appointment to SCOTUS was partisan? ACB is far from that, she is an originalist sure, but that means she simply cannot do what you claim she's going to do, pass judgments based on who appointed her, and her personal beliefs about things. By her own admission, She is bound by the laws written and not some notion of "fairness" based on subjective partisan or political views.
It's clear to me that the left-leaning folks in this country are duped into thinking the role of the court is to s
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Biden is waaaay out front in the polls. There is no way that Trump could possibly win.
Not sure if this is intended to be sarcasm or not.
Polls, of course, have been misleading before, most notably in 2016 (when people decided to ignore the uncertainties and the fact that the predicted win margin was less than the margin of error.)
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The poll people this time learned to weight their polls with respect to those without a college education, which they hadn't done last time. So if they are off, it probably won't be because of that.
What will be interesting is if the R's lose big, and I hope they do, they'll have left R droppings all over government that must be cleaned up. In addition, the damage they did to the courts will come back to bite them since now the D's can run against that in the next election.
The damage to foreign relations and
Re: What is the problem? (Score:1)
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You need to keep up. The new term is "chumps".
Re: What is the problem? (Score:2)
Don't hold your breath for the ideal candidate to arrive.
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Don't hold your breath for the ideal candidate to arrive.
If you're waiting for candidates to just "arrive", you're letting others make the selection.
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Sometimes the available options don't offer a meaningful difference.
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What I'm telling you is that you're limiting yourself to what others have chosen for you. You have the option of telling someone that you'd like to nominate them because you want them to represent you.
Re:What is the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
If only they got a college education they would realize....
The people with a college education seem to realize that a real-estate developer with a history of bankruptcy does not make a good chief executive, and that a boring, "just-keep-the-infrastructure-running" politician actually might sound like a good idea.
Re: What is the problem? (Score:1)
Re: What is the problem? (Score:1)
The undecided voter then asks âoeHow is the chicken cooked?â
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Polling is taking into account "unlikely" voters. That is sort of what screwed up polls in 2016 - there were a whole lot of first time voters for Obama who sat it out in 2016, who were "likely" voters. Also a districts where a lot of people rarely voted showed up in high numbers in 2016. Worrying about likely versus unlikely voters was a shortcut which usually works but failed badly.
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So, how about revealing that proof?
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I will watch.
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The polls being reported aren't just misleading, they are flat out mathematically, provably fake.
Extraordinary claim require extraordinary evidence. You, on the other hand, have zero evidence.
There are many of polls being done by dozens of independent organizations ranging from Pew to Fox News: so you're alleging a major conspiracy to "fake" polls, incorporating hundreds, possibly thousands of people.
This is the real voter suppression, it just isn't going to work.
Nope again. What you are alleging is a disinformation conspiracy. Disinformation is also wrong, but it is not voter suppression; that's a different thing.
Lies [Re:What is the problem?] (Score:4, Informative)
How is it an extraordinary claim?
It is an extraordinary claim because you are alleging a massive conspiracy known to hundreds of people, with no evidence.
These same people have been lying to you almost non-stop for four years.
Number one on the list of people who have been lying to me, so far, seems to be Donald Trump. I'll start with his statement-- repeated a dozen times-- that he would release his taxes. Well, it's been over five years since he said it. Has he released them?
Or try these:
https://www.factcheck.org/pers... [factcheck.org]
https://www.politifact.com/per... [politifact.com]
https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/24... [cnn.com]
But you don't seem to notice those lies. Oh, yes-- it's another conspiracy, those lying newsmen telling us that his lies are actually true! It's the fake news that says they're lies!
Shut it down until after the election (Score:2)
Sometimes, the short and very sharp shock works the best.
Shut facebook down in the US until after the election.
Re:Shut it down until after the election (Score:5, Insightful)
Errr, there's some reason to keep it open after the election? What am I missing here?
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Everything about this is stupid. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Everything about this is stupid. (Score:4, Interesting)
I get more wound up over the fact that people use facebook as a primary news source. And even more so that they take article headlines they read on facebook as news without ever reading a single word of the actual articles.
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I get more wound up over the fact that people use facebook as a primary news source. And even more so that they take article headlines they read on facebook as news without ever reading a single word of the actual articles.
Consider if you did the same directly from CNN.com:
16 mentions of "Trump"
2 mentions of "Biden"
(I'll leave it to your imagination as to whether those are positive or negative headlines).
Perhaps we should be equally concerned with major news outlets having nothing to say about the supposed frontrunner.
Re:Everything about this is stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Everything about this is stupid. (Score:1)
Jesus fuck heâ(TM)s funny though. Turns the news channel into a comedy show. Super funny.
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Slashdot led the way years ago! Who in the world reads the articles anyway?
If you're paying attention (Score:3, Insightful)
Trump has also constantly cast doubt on the election results, in particular on ballots counted after Nov 3rd, on mail in voting, and his polit
Re:If you're paying attention (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: If you're paying attention (Score:2)
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I think it's safe to say that no matter how the election turns out, we're all facing some hard years ahead.
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Geez you will believe anything if it confirms your bias. Trump voters have been lying to pollsters for months.
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If you find yourself getting wound up over [the undermining of democracy], consider finding something better to do with your time.
Frankly, there is nothing more appropriate for a US citizen to be upset about than someone attempting to take away the right of my fellow American.
The Trump campaign produced a number of ads that said "Election Day is Today." [...] These ads should not have been approved because they violate Facebook's policy against misrepresenting the date of the election.
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The Trump campaign produced a number of ads that said "Election Day is Today." [...] These ads should not have been approved because they violate Facebook's policy against misrepresenting the date of the election.
One thing I find amusing about the "educated slashdotters" is that they are prepared to believe any quotes from random organizations (who is "Popular Information"?). And by "amusing" I mean "pathetic". You guys are worse than people who read Twitter to get their news. You do realize that things like "Popular Information" are just websites, right? You can have a website too for $20 a month.
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Shooting the messenger is a popular fallacy type. You need a reason to shoot the messenger, the fact that they have a website is not a valid reason for saying they are unreliable. Saying you don't know who they are is also not a good reason for doubting their statements.
If you look at the article you can see it links articles related to Facebook new rules and it names the people it quotes and it posts images of the ads that violate policy.
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This doesn't wind me up, but what does is the fact that many people appear to want to shut down FB and other social media sites simply because they see a liberal bias in them.
There are valid anti-trust arguments to be made, but I'm convinced the people making the most noise wouldn't care if these companies had a right-wing bias. Now I'm seeing complaints from supposed conservatives about data collection and privacy, but it was Republicans who voted against any protections when it came to ISPs. Most of th
Why are you still using Fakebook (Score:4, Interesting)
--It's spyware, biased, and tends to bring out the worst tendencies in some people. I've managed to live without it completely for months. Excise it from your life, uninstall the app on your phone and it won't be a bother.
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Everyone has to start somewhere. Be it days, weeks, months, or years, at least GP finally made the decision to quit FB. We should applaud that.
I've been without for just over two years now, and my life is qualitatively better for having given up the addiction, (the only one, to date, that I've ever been able to give up cold turkey.)
Usually because friends and family are there (Score:2)
Also people move a lot more than they used to thanks to unstable work conditions. Again, Facebook is an effective way to find new friends.
Facebook and Google (Score:2)
It's quite easy to understand why Facebook and Google do what they do:
https://memory-alpha.fandom.co... [fandom.com]
Maybe we should look at the harm (Score:3)
Just misstating or misleading someone isnt a fraud you have to be doing it to induce them to do something against their interest.
Telling someone its election day, in a state where they are allowed to vote early, may not be harmful in any way at all if you also inform them they need to go to the county offices or whatever and not their usual polling place or wait until 11/3. After all it can be 'election day' for that voter for all meaningful intents.
Whatever facebook's specific policy might be; I would say they should err on the side of running the ads unless the person making the evaluation probably consider if it would actually cause impediment to someone intending to exercise their right to vote.
Semantic BS (Score:5, Interesting)
The Trump campaign produced a number of ads that said "Election Day is Today." These ads violate Facebook's policies. Why? In order to comply with the moratorium, the ads need to begin delivering impressions prior to October 27. The Trump campaign spent a small amount of money delivering these ads to Facebook users in Ohio and elsewhere. But, while early voting has started in many states, it is not Election Day anywhere. These ads should not have been approved because they violate Facebook's policy against misrepresenting the date of the election.
With nearly 60 million votes cast as I write this, it can reasonably be argued that what we used to call "Election Day" has morphed into "Election Season" with some municipalities offering in-person and by-mail voting up to 4 weeks (or more) before "Election Day".
Arguably, the purpose of the ad was to get viewers to consider today "Election Day" ratther than wait till the last minute when the crowds will be greatest.
Typo (Score:2)
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The same way that fighting talk, slander, libel, and a number of other types of speech are not protect5ed by the first amendment.
But you go on imagining the first amendment has the level of protection you think it does.
Of course, the irony is no doubt lost on you that you're on one hand declaring the first amendment to be absolute - that all speech is legitimate under it, and on the other asking for Democratic law makers to be silenced for saying something you don't like.
Classic Trumptard, happy to demand t
Tell me... (Score:1)
Is it "slander" or "libel" to spend four years insisting that president Trump colluded with Russia? Even after more than 60 Obama admin officials testified UNDER OATH behind closed doors (as opposed to what they said while NOT under oath on CNN and MSNBC) that they had NO EVIDENCE of any such "collusion"? Even after the FBI had to release the documents that show that they knew from the beginning that the Steele Dossier was a fraud and that the only "evidence" for it was the press reporting about it (which t
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Except "hate speech" as it's commonly used actually is supported by the first amendment. There's extensive case law on it.
As p
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Loved the comments about the Twitter CEO. "Homeless man" came up a lot LOL.
So the inmates really are running the asylum.
Burn Facebook to the ground (Score:2)
When you start down the path of censorship... (Score:2)
and then apply arbitrary and unpublished rules to benefit your preferred friends, you're eventually going to make EVERYBODY mad. Why? Because eventually people will question your more obviously biased censoring, and then they'll press for the details of how and why, which will expose the arbitrary nature - to try to hide this, you will be forced to un-censor some stuff, which angers the people who wanted it censored...
It's a tangled web, that will only become more and more complex the longer you try to main