Facebook missteps stoke fears of long political
ad blackout online
Campaigns and groups worry they won't be able to run
ads on Google or Facebook for post-Nov. 3 runoff elections, and possibly
beyond.
By ELENA
SCHNEIDER and ZACH MONTELLARO
10/28/2020
09:33 PM EDT
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/28/facebook-political-ad-blackout-433532
When
Facebook and Google announced plans to ban new political ads around the end of
the election, they left one key thing out of the new policies: an end date.
Now, as
Facebook’s pre-election blackout on new ads begins and a total post-election
freeze on Google and Facebook ads looms, digital strategists in both parties
are worried that ads on the biggest digital platforms may never come back — or,
at the very least, they’ll be down so long that they paralyze campaigns in
major races set to stretch beyond Nov. 3.
Those fears
spiked in recent days after Facebook’s blackout started Tuesday with the social
media giant taking down ads that groups in both parties said had been
pre-approved. A day and a half later, many groups said they are still
struggling to resolve these inconsistencies with the companies’ advertising
reps.
Democrats,
in particular, are concerned that the undefined timeline for restarting online
ads could hamper efforts to raise money and voter awareness around potential
Senate runoffs in Georgia and Mississippi in January. Others noted that the
policies will make it more difficult for campaigns to raise legal funds for
recounts.
One
Democratic operative affiliated with a Georgia Senate campaign reached out to
Google’s representative for advice on budgeting advertising for the expected
January runoff in the state, but Google advised that they should “not budget”
for that spending at all — setting off “alarm bells” inside the party that the
ban may extend well into 2021, according to a person familiar with the
exchange.
“They went
from implying it would be a week or so, and [now] they’ve stopped implying that
and they are using the words like indefinitely,” said Maddie Kriger, director
of digital media at Priorities USA, a major Democratic super PAC that had
nearly 600 pre-approved ads taken down by Facebook this week. “It’s super
concerning that there [could] be elections happening that we can’t communicate
to voters around.”
An official
with the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee also said that the tech
giants have been “intentionally vague” about when they would start running new
political ads again, after initially giving the committee the impression that
the bans would be short-term.
"We’re
deeply concerned that at this late date, it’s still unknown when and how
political ads will resume,” Scott Fairchild, the DSCC executive director, said
in a statement shared with POLITICO. “It is their responsibility to share this
information with candidates, campaigns and their users, and we expect immediate
answers.”
Representatives
of Facebook and Google said that their political ad bans were temporary.
“Our
intention is to block political and issue ads only for a short period of time,”
a Facebook spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “As part of our efforts
to protect the integrity of this election, we are temporarily blocking the
creation of any new political and issue ads during the final week of the
election and all political and issue ads in the election’s immediate
aftermath."
In early
October, Sarah Schiff, a Facebook product manager, told reporters that after
all “social issue, electoral and political ads” are paused after the polls
close on Nov. 3, “advertisers can expect this to last for a week, so this is
subject to change and we will notify advertisers when this policy is lifted,”
noting that they are “temporarily stopping these ads after the election to
reduce opportunities for confusion or abuse.”
For Google,
its “sensitive events” policy — which will begin after polls close on Election
Day and prevent advertisers from being able to run ads referencing candidates
or the election — was also deployed at the beginning of the coronavirus
pandemic, initially blocking Covid-related ads to prevent misinformation and
price gouging. Eventually, Google allowed ads around coronavirus to start
running.
“Given the
likelihood of delayed election results this year, when polls close on November
3, we will pause ads referencing the 2020 election, the candidates, or its
outcome,” said Charlotte Smith, a spokeswoman for Google. “This is a temporary
measure, and we’ll notify advertisers when this policy is lifted.”
But without
a firm end date, some digital consultants are now privately speculating that
the tech giants may be looking to get out of the political ad game, as they
confront a public relations headache and concerns about online misinformation.
A Senate hearing Wednesday illustrated how deep anger with big tech companies
runs in both parties, with Sen. Ted Cruz pressing Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on
whether his platform had the ability to “influence elections.” When Dorsey said
no, Cruz shot back: “Why do you block anything?”
A
Democratic digital strategist, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said
there’s an “extreme level of concern that political ads are going to be banned
outright.” Another Republican digital consultant said he’s “surprised” they
haven’t already banned political ads to “avoid the headache,” but “if they do,
Congress will probably be more willing to regulate them.”
“A total
ban on political advertising by Facebook and Google would be catastrophic,”
said Eric Wilson, a GOP digital consultant who worked on Marco Rubio’s 2016
presidential campaign. “Together, they account for the vast majority of online
advertising. This would shut off candidates, PACs, and issue advocacy groups
from reaching voters.”
But Wilson,
echoing others, noted that “just looking at the revenue Facebook has generated
from political ads this year, it’d be gross malpractice on behalf of
shareholders if they shut that off.”
“Ultimately,
I think Facebook likes to make money and there’s lots of money in politics,”
said Ryan Alexander, a Democratic digital strategist.
Facebook
drew sharp criticism from political groups and operatives this week after
initiating its pre-election ad blackout. The process arbitrarily removed
pre-approved ads from its platform, cutting off key messaging to voters in the
crucial final days before the election.
“We are
aware that a subset of ads may show as paused,” read a statement Facebook sent
to advertisers on Tuesday, which was shared with POLITICO. “Any ads that met
the criteria to run during the final campaign will be eligible to run once
we've resolved any data lags. We apologize for any inconvenience.”
But
Facebook has not yet given advertisers any clarity about what caused the
removals, acknowledging to them that it was a “technical glitch,” consultants
said. Rob Leathern, Facebook’s director of product management, tweeted Tuesday
afternoon that the platform was “investigating” issues into “ads being paused
incorrectly” and that they were “working quickly on these fixes.” But several
consultants and groups said they were still facing challenges in returning
their ads to the platform well into Wednesday.
Facebook
noted, however, that while some ads may have been pulled because of technical
issues, still others may have been pulled down because of “user error” and not
complying with their policy.
Campaigns
and outside groups scrambled to upload ads into Facebook’s system before the
ban on new ads began. Some of them tried to anticipate the future so they could
run closer to the election, including ads from President Donald Trump about GDP
numbers set to be released on Thursday, or ads from groups like the ACLU
encouraging voters to stay in line after polls close.
Nevertheless,
many of those pre-loaded ads were among those that got removed.
“This is a
clusterfuck,” said Annie Levene, a Democratic digital consultant. “We’ve been
communicating with a group of the electorate for persuasion or for
[get-out-the-vote] for weeks, millions of dollars have been sunk into it, and
when those ads disappear, we lose the ability to communicate with those people,
and we’re losing precious hours, potentially days.”
A DSCC
official said that “just one week out” from Election Day, “the DSCC, along with
several of its most competitive campaigns in Montana, North Carolina and Texas
were blocked from running ads,” issues that “still hadn’t been resolved as of
Wednesday afternoon.” The official also noted that the “poorly defined policy”
has “implications for both fundraising and voter outreach after Nov. 3.”
The effects
of Facebook’s pre-election policy are running all the way down the ballot, from
both presidential campaigns to state legislative races.
“In a state
legislative race that only has 30,000 voters in a media market of more than a
million, you can micro-target [on Facebook], so to lose that” is “problematic,”
said David Tackett, a Republican consultant who works on a slate of state
legislative races in Oklahoma and saw some of his pre-approved ads pulled. “And
to find out a week before the election that 15 to 20 percent of your budget
can’t be spent on what you planned? That’s extremely frustrating.”
This is a
“site-wide issue that’s affecting everyone,” said one Republican working with a
major outside group. Facebook, meanwhile, is “going dark on people,” the person
said.
Both the
Biden and the Trump campaigns confirmed that they had pre-approved ads removed
during Facebook’s policy implementation. But the Trump campaign also created
new ads after the ban was supposed to go into effect on Oct. 27, HuffPost
reported.
The
campaign was able to create ads saying “Election Day is today,” which cut
against Facebook’s recommendations that advertisers only say “‘Vote on November
3’ instead of ‘Vote Today.’” Facebook removed most of the new ads after being
contacted by HuffPost, the site reported.
The
political digital ad ecosystem has already faced massive upheaval over the last
two years. Google limited the targeting options political advertisers have on
its platform at the end of 2019. Facebook declined to take the same step
earlier this year, but over the summer, Facebook gave individual users the
option to opt out of seeing political ads altogether.
Twitter, a
smaller player in the digital ad space, outright banned political ads toward
the end of 2019, and Adobe followed suit on its ad platform over the summer. At
the time, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that he’d also
considered banning political ads altogether, but chose not to, noting that his
platform would “err on the side of greater expression.”
Digital
strategists were united in their calls for more clarity from the tech
platforms.
“For the
sake of both parties, lay down the ground rules and then keep those in place
through the general election,” said Tim Cameron, a GOP consultant who also
dealt with several ad disruptions. “You’d think they'd have been able to tell
us something in the first quarter of this year about how they’d handle this.”
“They’re
trying to address issues from 2016, and it’s 2020,” Cameron said.
Steven Overly contributed reporting.
'Who the hell elected you?': Republicans blast tech
giants at hearing
Senators
spent nearly four hours Wednesday pressing the CEOs of Facebook, Twitter and
Google on how they moderate speech on their platforms — a hearing that also
showed the sharp partisan rupture between Republicans' and Democrats' views of
Silicon Valley's problems.
Republicans
lambasted the tech executives for alleged bias against conservatives. Democrats
pushed the companies on how they're handling violent extremists and threats
against U.S. democracy, while questioning why the panel was even holding the
hearing six days before the election.
Here are
the key moments from the hearing.
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