Lies in political ads are allowed, but you can see fewer of them

Lies are bad. But a little fewer lies are…a little less bad?

On Thursday, Facebook announced it would not change its controversial policy of allowing political ads to contain lies. Instead, the company will give its users the option to see fewer political ads, as well as give them a little more control over which ads they see, and which they don’t see. 

The changes are coming via an update to Facebook’s Ad Library, a tool that lets anyone see all the ads that politicians run on Facebook and Instagram. Starting sometime in the first quarter of 2020, when the changes are scheduled to roll out, users will be able to:

• See the estimated target size for each political, electoral, or social issue ad.

• Search the Ad Library more precisely, for example by exact phrases or with filters that include audience size as well as dates and regions reached with a particular campaign.

• Control which ads reach (or don’t reach) them based on Custom Audience lists. Custom Audiences are lists of user information that help advertisers target ads, and users will be able to fine-tune their ad-seeing experience by hiding ads based on an advertiser’s Custom Audience list, or make themselves eligible to see an ad that an advertiser otherwise wouldn’t show. This change is coming “later this month.”

• Choose to see fewer political and social issue ads.

The new controls are nice (and will hopefully prompt more users to use the Ad Library, which hasn’t been very useful in the past), but Facebook’s blog post announcing the change, signed by director of product management Rob Leathern, essentially repeats Facebook’s stance towards political ads, which can contain lies. Massachusetts Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren perhaps illustrated the issue best when she ran an ad campaign on Facebook with false claims.

Twitter recently stopped running political ads altogether, precisely for this reason, and Google somewhat limited political ads without explicitly banning them.  But Facebook is taking a different route. 

According to Leathern, Facebook considered taking a similar approach as Google, but ultimately gave up, due to “the importance of these tools for reaching key audiences from a wide range of NGOs, non-profits, political groups and campaigns, including both Republican and Democrat committees in the U.S.”

Facebook’s stance is that political ads should be regulated by law, but until they are, all Facebook thinks it should do is make sure the ads abide by the company’s Community Standards which ban hate speech, harmful content and ads that intimidate potential voters into not voting. 

“Ultimately, we don’t think decisions about political ads should be made by private companies, which is why we are arguing for regulation that would apply across the industry,” he wrote. “We (…) will continue to work with regulators and policy makers in our ongoing efforts to help protect elections.