Meta has given the thumbs up on Facebook and Instagram to ads claiming that the 2020 presidential election was rigged.
In 2024 there is a presidential election in the United States, and with a fierce battle at the ballot box looming on the horizon across the seas, social media – where more than a few votes are at stake – is inevitably under public scrutiny. The spotlight is particularly on Meta, which has given the go-ahead on Facebook and Instagram to postings claiming that the 2020 presidential election was rigged.
The rule allowing this controversial type of advertising on Facebook and Instagram was reportedly sneaked in by Meta in 2022 after the US midterm elections, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Meta had a rule in place until then that prohibited Republican candidates from launching campaigns that referred to the 2020 election as rigged.
Meta now allows political advertising campaigns to call the 2020 election “rigged” or “stolen”, but prevents them from questioning the legitimacy of ongoing or future elections.
Meta is not the first social network to introduce changes to its advertising policies ahead of the upcoming 2024 elections in the United States. In August, X (formerly Twitter) announced, for example, that it would lift its ban on political advertising, originally introduced in 2019.
Similarly, in June, YouTube announced that it would stop removing videos that were deemed fraudulent in the 2020 elections or earlier, reversing a rule that had been in place for three years. The Google subsidiary argued that the change was aimed at safeguarding the ability to “openly discuss political ideas, including those of a controversial nature or based on unproven assumptions”.
The company led by Mark Zuckerberg is flying the flag of freedom of expression to justify the change.
Meta is also reportedly clinging to freedom of expression when it comes to welcoming back political advertising that calls into question the legitimacy of the 2020 elections. According to The Wall Street Journal, Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, has reportedly taken the position that the parent company of Facebook and Instagram should not decide whether or not elections are legitimate.
In August this year Donald Trump reportedly implemented a campaign on Facebook that would only have been possible thanks to Meta’s new rules. In that campaign, the former US president went on the record with these statements: “We won in 2016. There was a rigged election in 2020 and we got more votes than the current president”.
The Tech Oversight Project has fiercely criticised the shift in Meta’s advertising policies. “This ad is a horrible preview of what we can expect in 2024,” says Kyle Morse, deputy executive director of The Tech Oversight Project.
Coupled with the fact that Meta will reduce the amount of political content shared organically on Facebook, the prominence of political campaigns questioning the legitimacy of elections will take a major hit in 2024, The Tech Oversight Project reports.
In addition, over the past year Meta has laid off around 21,000 employees, many of whom were focused on enforcing the company’s policies in elections.
In 2016, Facebook was also accused of having a malign influence on the US presidential election because of its inability to contain disinformation in its domains.