Publicly, Mark Zuckerberg has appeared as defiant as ever amid growing pressure over Facebook’s choice not to screen or fact-check political ads. “People should be able to see for themselves what politicians are saying,” the co-founder and CEO said last week, defending the company’s laissez faire approach. Behind the scenes, however, he seems increasingly open to making at least some changes—though, as usual, the moves he’s considering would infuriate virtually everyone.
According to the Washington Post, Zuckerberg has privately suggested imposing limits on political ads and changing the way they are labeled. Under the proposed changes, the company would cap the number of ads a single candidate can run at a time, and ban ads in the three days leading up to an election. Additionally, the company would make clear that such content has not been fact checked—a stab at flagging the ads while dodging responsibility for what they contain. The social media giant has discussed the proposed policy changes with both Republican and Democratic operatives recently, the Post reported Wednesday, but both sides were wary, concerned the ad limits could be too restrictive and would make it harder for them to get through to voters. (The official Trump campaign Twitter account has accused Facebook of trying to “take important tools away from us for 2020.”)
Sources who spoke to the Post added that Democrats were also concerned that the changes wouldn’t actually prevent the spread of misinformation through ads like the ones Donald Trump’s reelection campaign has run about Joe Biden. Prominent Democrats like Elizabeth Warren—who’s made breaking up Facebook and other big tech companies a key tenet of her campaign, and who ran an intentionally false ad on the platform earlier this fall claiming Zuckerberg had endorsed Trump to goad him—continue to insist the company is shirking responsibility. And of course, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez arguably jump-started the controversy when she questioned Zuckerberg during a House hearing. The pressure to act only increased in October, when rival Jack Dorsey announced that Twitter would ban all political ads.
Zuckerberg has mostly held firm, making it clear that he doesn’t want to be the arbiter of truth, and framing the issue in terms of free speech. “I don’t think it’s right for a private company to censor politicians or news in a democracy,” he said in a speech at Georgetown University in October. While he’s maintained that he doesn’t want to ban political ads entirely, rumors emerged in November that he might be open to some action, including potential changes to how political ads are labeled. That Facebook is now market-testing such changes to political operatives suggests there’s a chance they could become a reality. But opposition—including from the Trump campaign—could make Facebook wary of pulling the trigger on anything, particularly with the 2020 election less than a year away. The company has remained typically non-committal, confirming to the Post that it is considering revisions, but declining to say what they are and when, if at all, it will enact them.
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