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Despite backlash from Congress and other tech companies, Facebook has decided to continue allowing political ads that spread false information, citing that in the absence of proper blanket regulation over social media companies such as itself from Congress, it will stick with its existing policy of preferring free speech over stopping misinformation.
Restricting political ads on social media platforms is a controversial issue in Congress, with most Democrats supporting increased regulation of political slander and Republicans supporting allowing free speech, so not much has been done to change the legal status quo.
Tim Murtagh, a Trump spokesperson, claimed that unrestricted ads “encourages more Americans to be involved in the process” and limiting them in any way would “lead to voter suppression.” Instead, Facebook plans to improve transparency about who pays for the ads, and allow users to limit their exposure to political ads in general.
Twitter has already completely banned political ads of any kind, and Google has tightened its regulations on personalized ad profiles for users.
Facebook does have the valid concern that they aren’t able to properly police the vast number of ads with false information. However, I believe that even if they aren’t able to catch all the factually incorrect political ads out there, Facebook should at least do everything it can to stop advertisements that are objectively false, political or otherwise, which should dissuade other incorrect ads.
Viewing this controversy reminded me of the “freedom vs. equality” debate. Here, however, we have to decide whether the freedom of speech that we as Americans value so highly should extend to paid, false advertisements. I personally believe that advertising misinformation is bad enough to warrant limiting it, but the rest of the country may not share that opinion.
Which branch of government makes a decision about political ads (Congress could pass legislation, the president could influence Congress, or a court could allow or condemn Facebook’s conduct), which do you think it might be, and why?
5 comments:
Ultimately, I think it’s up to the legislative to make the decision as to whether freedom of speech should be inhibited for the sake of truth. It could be argued that the SCOTUS should reinterpret the meaning of free speech, particularly when it comes to misinformation; however, cases like Citizens United lead me to believe that they would take a more conservative approach (although you never know). I think if you really want to kick or “jump start” the movement against overt deception by media and political advertisers, people need to start using this freedom to attack those who agree with the status quo. According to your summary, it states that Republicans tend to support the continuation of free speech under its current system (effectively maintaining Facebook’s ability to allow for false political advertisement). If this is largely true, then I think Democrats or anyone who is opposed should start producing fake advertisements against the Republicans. Maybe make a fake ad that shows Mitch McConnell’s support for the Green New Deal, or Trump’s “new” attitude towards immigrants. Until misinformation becomes a serious threat to Republicans, I don’t see any legislation passing. It will certainly be interesting to see how this story develops.
The wording of the question sort of implies that all the branches can take part in making the decision about such political ads, which is true in certain cases, but ultimately I do think Congress would have the largest role in the process. For the legislative branch to make the decision/law however, an amendment to the Constitution would be needed as this issue applies to the First Amendment, and such an event is clearly highly unlikely to happen. Therefore, I believe what Carlos said about the SCOTUS possibly reinterpreting the meaning of free speech could be an alternative response with maybe a higher chance of occurring and being successful.
While I also agree with the notion against allowing political ads with false information, I think it's still somewhat good at least that Facebook is planning to improve their transparency for who pays for the ads and making an option for users to limit their exposure to the ads. We'll see if they actually go through with their plan though.
From Facebook's standpoint, any course of action would result in some sort of issue, whether it be offending a certain group of people or offending the written law of the land. In the worst case scenarios, restricting all ads would offend the freedom of speech and would be considered as widespread censorship to some people. On the other side of the spectrum, placing no restrictions on ads gives way for these misleading ads to further polarize and radicalize the population, as they are currently doing. Even so, going through all the ads and meticulously hand picking is still a product of bias directed towards the ones that sorted through the ads. Bias is even included --surprise, surprise-- in governmental regulations on the ads. But considering the turbulent nature of this in regards to the government, this has to be expected; each branch has power over the other, resulting in an even battlefield in policymaking. But of course, this is entirely reflective of a flawless society with a flawless government, and to be honest, a government that works properly will never exist in America.
I think that the SCOTUS should ultimately make this decision, as it is something that would affect the "law of the land." However, it is my understanding that Congress is involved with any changes to the Constitution, and that it is incredibly difficult to change/alter what it says. My personal opinion is that these ads are stupid, yes, but people post stupid, nonfactual things online all the time. I guess the fact that they are ads adds (pun intended??) to the frustration people might feel regarding these posts. My problem with nonfactual internet posts are that there can be so much nonsense you don't even know where to find factual info, or may find it difficult to differentiate fact from fiction. I have a pretty low opinion of the majority of Americans regarding intelligence and rationale (which is really obscure if you know me), so I'm not surprised that people are taking in the information without any regard to the legitimacy of it. I think it can be dangerous because of this. However, I would really like to see more people taking the initiative to research these topics and come up with their own opinions and understand the facts of a situation rather than just taking Facebooks' ads as truth.
In the end, I feel that it is Congress’ responsibility to make the final decision. Having all three branches possess power over each other will only polarize the government and our country. Congress passing a legislation would also help limit the possibility of backlash or resistance, as it can be more widely shown if it was just a court order or presidential influence. Moreover, I feel that Facebook as the right to allow this type of “free speech” if other applications like Twitter and Google have prohibited it. Hopefully, as Olivia said, people would be smart enough to do more research on ads that presumably may be false (on facebook) -- and for this research, they would most likely end up in Google, a website that doesn’t allow fake advertisements.
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