Intro
Facebook announced they will be pausing political advertising on their platform for a paltry week before the November 3rd election. This is clearly a move to appear sympathetic to the preservation of democracy while still amassing millions in the preceding weeks promoting disinformation campaigns (often financially backed by Russian and Chinese operatives). Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg continues to forge alliances with our aspiring dictator in chief and his few remaining supporters.
With all this in mind we would like to take a look at some of the ads similar to those that Facebook will be profiting from in the coming weeks. Let’s dive in!
The Team Trump Page
The Team Trump Facebook page is managed by Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. Today (September 3rd) they spent between $50-100k promoting a Facebook poll to demonstrate support for the President. They likely targeted existing Trump supporters initially to skew the results which could then be shown to swing voters. These ads ran for less than a full 24 hours. At this rate they will spend $1.5 million on Facebook advertising over the next month.
We Are Great Again PAC Page
This page seems to allude to the protests against injustice in the United States by claiming Nancy Pelosi is attempting “the create chaos and confusion”. Another ad claims Trump is “focused on ensuring a fair election” when that is clearly not the case. While this page spent considerably less on this ad and their followers are fewer, the misinformation is no less harmful to democracy. This is the type of propaganda that Facebook profits from.
2020 American Defense Fund Page
This page makes the same claim that it is Trump who is defending the security of our democratic elections when we know that to be untrue. Further, the ads claim that democrats are promoting conspiracy theories (presumably from QAnon and other anonymous sources) when Trump himself frequently perpetuates these theories not supported by facts. We see a couple of ads they ran below.
Final Thougts
These types of ads are everywhere and Facebook as done virtually nothing to fact-check the claims being made. They continue to profit by promoting lies that are harmful to the fabric of democracy. Facebook hides behind the guise of free speech protection, but a well-informed public that agrees on consensus reality is critical to any functioning democracy that protects free speech. Facebook and it’s shareholders have made a fortune putting divisive propaganda in front of it’s users for more than fours years. Let’s not be to quick to commend them for stopping. After a week they will be back to business as usual.