Facebook’s fact-checkers

 

WASHINGTON POST

Facebook’s fact-checkers have ruled claims in Trump ads are false — but Facebook is doing nothing about it.

Fact-checkers were unanimous in their assessments when President Trump began claiming in June that Democrat Joe Biden wanted to “defund” police forces. PolitiFact called the allegations “false,” as did CheckYourFact. The Associated Press detailed “distortions” in Trump’s claims. FactCheck.org called an ad airing them “deceptive.” Another site, the Dispatch, said there is “nothing currently to support” Trump’s claims.

But these judgments, made by five fact-checking organizations that are part of Facebook’s independent network for policing falsehoods on the platform, were not shared with Facebook’s users. That is because the company specifically exempts politicians from its rules against deception. Ads containing the falsehoods continue to run freely on the platform, without any kind of warning or label. 

Enabled by Facebook’s rules, Trump’s reelection campaign has shown versions of the false claim on Facebook at least 22.5 million times, in more than 1,400 ads costing between $350,000 and $553,000, a Washington Post analysis found based on data from Facebook’s Ad Library. The ads, bought by the campaign directly or in a partnership with the Republican National Committee, were targeted at Facebook users mainly in swing states such as Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, Florida and Pennsylvania.

Those were not the only times Trump’s campaign has taken advantage of Facebook’s policy allowing politicians to lie with impunity, something the company does not tolerate from nonpolitical advertisers

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Fact-checking organizations that partner with Facebook also have ruled that Trump ads have made untrue claims about Biden’s positions on school choice and health care for immigrants, as well as on the effectiveness of Trump’s response to the coronavirus, yet ads including these claims have been allowed to stay on the platform and carry no warning label, The Post’s review found.

Biden’s campaign has not taken similar advantage of Facebook’s leniency about political claims. Fact-checkers working with Facebook have found far fewer misleading statements from him or his campaign, a review of their work since May found.

Facebook created its fact-checking program in December 2016 as a key part of its response to the rampant misinformation spread on its platform during the presidential campaign that concluded with Trump’s victory.

The company signed up some of the biggest names in fact-checking, such as PolitiFact and FactCheck.org, which long considered curbing deception by politicians as central to their institutional missions.

But Facebook excluded from its fact-checking program statements by politicians, a policy formalized last year in an announcement denounced by many Democrats, civil rights groups and independent disinformation researchers. They complained that Facebook was removing one of the few checks on deceptions by Trump as the 2020 vote loomed.

Critics particularly warned that the ability of political advertisers to narrowly target demographic slices undermined transparency and created the opportunity to rapidly and strategically push falsehoods far more easily than in broadcast ads, which typically are seen by everyone in a particular area — allowing obviously misleading statements to be challenged.

Facebook has defended its position by saying that political speech should be as unfettered as possible and noting that traditional forms of political advertising — on radio, television and in mass mailings — are not required to be free of falsehoods.

Concern about falsehoods in Facebook advertising stems from the rampant lies, distortions and disinformation that flooded the platform in 2016, including by Russia’s Internet Research Agency, which used rubles to buy ads in which the operatives pretended to be American political activists. U.S. intelligence officials later determined Russia’s goal was to divide Americans along racial, social, religious and other political fault lines and to help elect Trump.

But Trump’s routine use of false and misleading claims during his presidency, along with his heavy and sophisticated use of social media, has fueled concern that unchecked disinformation would be a problem during the 2020 election season. 

PolitiFact, part of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, also has had combating political lies at the core of institutional mission since its founding in 2007. Editor in chief Angie Drobnic Holan said the claims of politicians should get more scrutiny, not less, though she praised Facebook for having a fact-checking system that goes beyond what other platforms do. 

“I feel like they’re giving politicians a privilege they don’t give to ordinary people, and why would they do that?” Holan said. “The politician’s exemption, from a fact-checking point of view, doesn’t make a lot of sense. They’re giving a break to power.”