Facebook has quietly rescinded a policy banning false claims in advertising, creating a specific exemption that leaves political adverts unconstrained regarding how they could mislead or deceive, as a potential general election looms in the UK.
The social network had previously banned adverts containing “deceptive, false or misleading content”, a much stronger restriction than its general rules around Facebook posts. But, as reported by the journalist Judd Legum, in the last week the rules have narrowed considerably, only banning adverts that “include claims debunked by third-party fact-checkers, or, in certain circumstances, claims debunked by organisations with particular expertise”.
Under Facebook’s third-party fact-checking programme, it invites independent organisations such as the UK’s Full Fact to verify claims posted to the social network. But the groups, made up mainly of small charities and nonprofits, are heavily constrained in how many claims they can fact-check, meaning they often only verify the most viral cases.
But even that limit has been lifted for political adverts. A separate policy introduced by the social network recently declared opinion pieces and satire ineligible for verification, including any website or page “with the primary purpose of expressing the opinion or agenda of a political figure”. The end result is that any direct statement from a candidate or campaign cannot be fact-checked and so is automatically exempted from policies designed to prevent misinformation.
The changes, Legum reported, followed a run of Donald Trump adverts that contained false claims but were not removed under the old rules.
The new rules could prompt a clash between Facebook and UK regulators. The Advertising Standards Authority does not cover political adverts in Britain, the content of which is largely unregulated, but it does cover all other adverts, including those posted on Facebook. The ASA’s code explicitly bans adverts that “materially mislead or [are] likely to do so”, language that is close to that used in Facebook’s previous policies.
A Facebook spokesman said: “We don’t believe that it’s an appropriate role for us to referee political debates. Nor do we think it would be appropriate to prevent a politician’s speech from reaching its audience and being subject to public debate and scrutiny.”
Facebook’s decision comes as the rival service TikTok takes the opposite stance. In a blogpost, the social network, whose reported 500 million users would make it the largest in the world not owned by Facebook, made clear it would not be hosting any political adverts.
“Any paid ads that come into the community need to fit the standards for our platform, and the nature of paid political ads is not something we believe fits the TikTok platform experience,” wrote Blake Chandlee, the company’s vice-president of global business solutions. “To that end, we will not allow paid ads that promote or oppose a candidate, current leader, political party or group, or issue at the federal, state, or local level – including election-related ads, advocacy ads, or issue ads.”
Chandlee said the decision was prompted by TikTok’s mission “to inspire creativity and build joy”. That same rationale had been cited by the company, which is owned by the Chinese startup Bytedance, to explain why it censored posts that went against the political orthodoxy of Beijing, mentioning topics such as the Tiananmen Square killings or the independence movement in Taiwan.
When the Guardian revealed the censorship, TikTok said the rules had since been repealed and replaced with ones that “take localised approaches” to “provide an app experience that fosters their creativity”.
