Could Facebook be the death of vote by mail?

Donald Trump's presidential campaign has run more than 500 misleading ads claiming that Democrats are using vote-by-mail to steal the November election.¹

But despite vowing to protect the 2020 election, Facebook refuses to stop these dangerously misleading ads.

Facebook is profiting off of Trump's voter suppression, and we're demanding that the Federal Trade Commission and Congress launch an investigation and take appropriate action to address Facebook's businesses practices now.

It is unfathomable that we’re facing another instance of Facebook's greed causing trouble for an election.

Four years ago, Facebook looked the other way while Cambridge Analytica invaded our privacy and scraped our data to run targeted political ads during the 2016 election.² The tech giant made huge profits from false, inflammatory ads that fed voters misleading information.³

There was such an uproar that Facebook swore to change its ways before 2020. The social media company changed its rules and claimed they would block "misleading" ads and block bots.

But then, in 2019, the company made a crucial exception for one of its biggest ad buyers—the Trump 2020 campaign.⁴

Now, as the coronavirus pandemic gets exponentially worse and the CDC is encouraging voters to use absentee ballots to avoid the polls, the Trump campaign is making disproven claims that vote-by-mail is an opening for fraud. These ads could cause untold numbers of people to not exercise their right to vote.

But all Facebook cares about is claiming the $2 million a week the Trump campaign spends on ads, not the harm these ads cause.⁵

Facebook can't be allowed to assist voter suppression efforts or continue to run misleading campaign ads. The only way we will stop them is by mobilizing to force federal regulators and congressional oversight panels to change Facebook's business model. Will you donate to help put a stop to Facebook’s greedy, damaging practices?

For our civil rights,

Robert Cruickshank,
Demand Progress

Sources:
1. Media Matters for America, "Facebook is letting the Trump campaign publish at least 529 ads with false claims of voter fraud," May 19, 2020
2. Wired, "The Cambridge Analytica story, explained," accessed July 10, 2020
3. The New York Times, "The Fake Americans Russia Created to Influence the Election," September 7, 2017
4. Vox, "Facebook is refusing to take down a Trump ad making false claims about Joe Biden," October 9, 2019
5. CNBC, "Trump ramps up Facebook ad spend as Biden pulls ahead in polls," June 29, 2020