Facebook Ads Are Racist and/or Politically Inappropriate: Campaigning Against Hillary’s Policies in the House of Representatives
The Facebook ads have collectively been viewed millions of times in swing states, posted by an account dubbed “Progress 2028,” a name suggesting a liberal counterpart to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.
Musk personally distributed the first of these checks at a pro-Trump event in Pennsylvania and hasn’t let the Department of Justice’s warning that the lottery may be illegal — or a recent lawsuit filed by Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner — stop him.
“Whether they are impactful is another question, but they are highly likely to deceive,” he said. “They seem real and the only way to recognize they are not is if you are a highly informed voter who knows the claims are untrue.”
Weissman with Public Citizen said mischaracterizing a candidate’s stances is a common political messaging tactic, but outright lies framed as if they are coming from the candidate goes beyond a brazen distortion.
It’s not clear if the site was referring to Harris endorsing a series of policy proposals she doesn’t do in the race or if it was just stating that she’ll have a chance to make sweeping reforms when she takes office.
Open Secrets found that Progress 2028 also sent text messages to potential voters making false claims about Harris’ policy positions with a link to the Progress 2028 web page, which gives the impression it is a group backing Harris for president, when the opposite is true.
The First Amendment Protects Political Speech: The Meta ad library argues that it is not enough to lie about the results of the 2018 Nov. 5 election
Weissman says this is not enough. Meta is not responsible for permitting this deception, according to Weissman. “Yes, there is a First Amendment right to lie, but that does not constrain Meta’s management of advertisements on its platform.”
As it did in 2020, Meta will not allow new political advertisements to be placed the week leading up to the Nov. 5 election, but political ads can still appear on the company’s platforms if purchased before the week of the election.
Daniels said deceptive political ads have been deployed “across the media landscape for decades,” adding that Meta’s Ad Library, where the reach of ads can be viewed, “brings a level of transparency to political advertising that far exceeds that of any other platform where these ads have run.”
Meta spokesman Ryan Daniels would not comment directly on the Progress 2028 ads, which were first highlighted by the tech news site 404 Media. The ads don’t appear to run afoul of Meta’s advertising rules which mostly require that the entity paying for the ad be disclosed. The rules also ban premature claims of victory and ads that question the legitimacy of the election process.
“It truthfully discloses who is paying for the ad, but that entity sounds like a Harris supporting organization, when it is not,” said Weissman, who has called on Meta to remove the ads.
Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, said that the advertisement disclosure at the bottom of the ad makes it easier for people to lie.
The ad buys are publicly available, thanks to Meta, Facebook’s parent company. So far 13 of these ads have been posted. As of Wednesday afternoon, Meta tallied the ads as having received 8.7 million impressions, although some viewers may have seen the same ads multiple times.
According to experts, there is nothing illegal about the ads since the First Amendment protects political speech. The messages can cause voters to stray just days before the election.
