SoylentNews

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:

Facebook pulls Trump campaign ads for fake census claims:

Facebook infamously has a broadly laissez-faire policy for political candidates. If you're running for office, you can lie as much as you want in your paid and unpaid content—with one small catch. Anything that lies about voting or the census, such as sharing fake registration links or deliberately spreading incorrect polling dates, is prohibited. Even if it comes directly from the Trump campaign.

It just turns out that Facebook needs a lot of prodding—in the form of negative media attention—to follow through.

The site Popular Information first reported on the Trump campaign's ads early yesterday. The sponsored posts, which appeared on the accounts of President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, were paid for by the Trump Make America Great Again committee, a joint fundraising effort by the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee.

One ad Popular Information featured includes an image of a sheet of paper labeled "2020 census," next to a picture of Trump giving his characteristic thumbs up, and it exhorts readers, "President Trump needs you to take the Official 2020 Congressional District Census today." It continues, "The information we gather from this survey will help us craft our strategies for YOUR CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT."

Clicking through the ad directed readers to a website labeled as the "Certified Website of President Donald J. Trump," Popular Information reported, billing itself as the "Official 2020 Congressional District Census."

Popular Information pointed out to Facebook that the ads seem to violate the company's bright-line policy prohibiting "misleading information about when and how to participate in the census," but a spokesperson for the company at first disagreed. According to Facebook, since the campaign ads also referenced the campaign, it was clear they were not official Census advertising.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/technology/facebook-trump-census-ads.html

WASHINGTON — Facebook said on Thursday that it had removed misleading ads run by President Trump’s re-election campaign about the 2020 census, in a stand against disinformation ahead of the decennial population count that begins next week.

Earlier this week, Trump Make America Great Again, a joint fund-raising arm of Donald J. Trump for President Inc. and the Republican National Committee, started running ads on the social media site that Facebook said could have caused confusion about the timing of the census.

“President Trump needs you to take the Official 2020 Congressional District Census today. We need to hear from you before the most important election in American history,” the ad said. The campaign asked followers to “respond NOW” to help our campaign messaging strategy, with an appeal to text “TRUMP to 8022.”

The Census Bureau will not begin to survey the public for its population survey until next week. The ad linked the census to the Trump campaign, a misrepresentation of the official government survey, said civil rights groups.

The census has become another disinformation test for social media companies. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have come under pressure for their handling of political speech and what has been a piecemeal approach to policing their platforms. Candidates in this year’s presidential election are expected to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on political ads, and the companies have already struggled to enforce consistent policies.

Facebook has taken the most permissive — and most criticized — approach to political speech, allowing candidates and their campaigns to post misleading information and target those messages to specific audiences.

https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-removed-misleading-census-ads-from-trump-campaign-2020-3

• Facebook has removed a series of ads posted by the Trump campaign that gave the misleading impression respondents would be taking part in the official 2020 US census.
• One of the ads reportedly read: "President Trump needs you to take the Official 2020 Congressional District Census today," implying the survey it linked to – a survey on Republican talking points – was the official census.
• A Facebook spokesperson told Business Insider that "there are policies in place to prevent confusion around the official US Census and this is an example of those being enforced."
• Facebook has faced criticism for its general unwillingness to fact-check political ads published on its platform, though it seems to draw the line at interfering with the US census.

The story is also widely reported elsewhere.

Original Submission