Facebook recently allowed a pro-Trump group to run an ad whose highlight was the claim that “Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr offered Ukraine $1 billion in aid if the country pushed out the man investigating a company tied to Mr. Biden’s son.” The ad had over 8 million views.
Biden’s campaign sent a request to Facebook to remove the ad as it was clearly false and misleading. Facebook replied that the ad did not violate the company’s policy and refused to take it down (BTW, CNN refused to air the ad to begin with). Among the arguments for why they would not take it down was the following telling statement
Even false statements and misleading content in ads, the company has said, are an important part of the political conversation.
Take a moment to savor that statement. How could anyone believe that false and misleading content is an important part of the political conversation ? It is only an important part of an attempt to subvert democracy by manipulating people into believing something that is not true.
We can rail all we want about Donald Trump and his corruption but all of it is only a symptom of much deeper problem we face: the weaponization of “free speech” as a tool to deceive large numbers of people into drawing conclusions that they would not likely have drawn if they had all the facts and to use that deception to manipulate the outcome of elections. The difference between broadcasting a lie that causes people to not vote for a candidate and simply going and altering the ballots is largely an academic one, the outcome is the same and thus should be treated as equally unacceptable.