What is the responsibility of advertising in influencing the national political conversation on social media?

 Facebook and Twitter have long been under fire for their part in facilitating the spread of fake news and hate speech, and this has mostly been in relation to individually shared content, rather than advertising.  The line of social media platforms has been that they are forums for see speech, and that users should not and will not be censored, as that would go against their core company value to their users.  This debate is a difficult one, and it’s one I find myself on one side of one day and on the other side the next.  

But not a lot of attention has been paid to the role of advertisements in relation to this problem.  The discussion has mostly been around UGC spreading fake news and problematic rhetoric rather than sponsored/paid ads being a culprit.  When advertising enters the argument, my position is clear: any advertisement on social media that is spreading fake news, undermining the results of an election, or discouraging mail-in voting through unsubstantiated claims that it is corrupt, should never be permitted on social media.  For me, there are no two ways about that.  It is one thing for Facebook and Twitter to claim that they should not have to censor their users from exercising their free speech, it is quite another to accept money from advertisers who will actively try to undermine our democracy on their platform.  

This is why I’m pleased to see that Facebook and Twitter have announced that they are taking this issue seriously, and put new guidelines in place that will not allow these types of ads on their platforms.  Interestingly, Twitter has announced that they will no longer accept political advertising, period, while Facebook has taken the route of just making changes to the qualifications for the types of political ads they will accept, at least until October 27th.  This date seems very suspect, as it only leaves one week before Election Day for Facebook to be political ad-free.  There is plenty of time between now and then for damage to be done.  So my hope is that their new ad-vetting process proves effective in the next four weeks to mitigate any ads that could be destructive to our democracy.  

Beyond leaving it up for the social media platforms themselves to mitigate these threats, where do the advertisers themselves come in?  What responsibility should advertisers hold in the types of ads they attempt to run on social media, or any other medium?  Should it be all about the bottom line in the end, or should advertisers have their own onus to stop the spread of fake news or statements that could undermine our democracy?  And to that end, where is the point where the lines between free speech, freedom of the press, and propaganda get blurred?  

Source: 

Facebook won’t accept ads that ‘delegitimize’ US election results

https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/01/facebook-election-ad-ban-delegitimize-election-results/?utm_medium=TCnewsletter&tpcc=TCdailynewsletter