INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
As Jack Dorsey announced his company Twitter would drop all political ads, Facebook CEO Zuckerberg doubled-down on his policy of refusing
to fact check politicians& ads
&At times of social tension there has often been an urge to pull back on free expression
We will be best served over the long term by resisting this urge and defending free expression.&
Still, Zuckerberg failed to delineate
between freedom of expression, and freedom of paid amplification of that expression which inherently favors the rich.
Facebook shares rise
on strong Q3, users up 2% to 2.45B
During today Q3 2019 earnings call where Facebook beat expectations and grew monthly users 2% to 2.45
billion, Zuckerberg spent his time defending the social network lenient political ad policy
You can read his full prepared statement here.
One clear objective was to dispel the idea that Facebook was motivated by greed to keep
Zuckerberg explained &We estimate these ads from politicians will be less than 0.5% of our revenue next year.& For reference, Facebook
earned $66 billion in the 12 months ending Q3 2019, so Facebook might earn around $330 million to $400 million in political ads next year
[Update: It wasn&t clear if issue ads and PAC ads were counted in Facebook 0.5% figure, but now the company says that number is just for ads
run directly by politicians.]
Zuckerberg also said that given Facebook removed 50 million hours per day of viral video watching from its
platform to support well-being which hurt ad viewership and the company share price, Facebook clearly doesn&t act solely in pursuit of
profit.
We just shared our community update and quarterly results
Here what I said on our earnings call
— Before we…
Posted by Mark Zuckerberg onWednesday, October 30, 2019
Facebook CEO also tried to bat down the theory that Facebook is
allowing misinformation in political ads to cater to conservatives or avoid calls of bias from them
&Some people say that this is just all a cynical political calculation and that we&re acting in a way that we don&t really believe because
we&re just trying to appease conservatives& he said, responding that &frankly, if our goal was that we&re trying to make either side happy
then we&re not doing a very good job because I&m pretty sure everyone is frustrated.&
Instead of banning political ads, Zuckerberg voiced
support for increasing transparency about how ads look, how much is spent on them, and where they&re run
&I believe that the better approach is to work to increase transparency
Adson Facebook are already more transparent than anywhere else
We have a political ads archive so anyone can scrutinize every ad that&s run.&
He mentioned that political ads are run by &Google, YouTube,
and most internet platforms&, seeming to stumble for a second as he was likely prepared to cite Twitter too until it announced it would
drop all political ads an hour earlier
He omitted that Pinterest and TikTok have also banned political ads.
It doesn&t help that hundreds of Facebook own employees have called on
their CEO to change the policy
He concluded that no one could accuse Facebook of not deeply thinking through the question and its downstream ramifications
Zuckerberg did leave himself an out if he chooses to change the policy, though
&I&ve considered whether we should not [sell political ads] in the past, and I&ll continue to do so.&
Facebook should ban campaign ads
End the lies.
Dorsey had tweeted that &We&ve made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally
We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought.& Democrat Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez expressed support for
Twitter move while Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale called it &a very dumb decision&
Twitter CEO took some clear swipes at Zuckerberg,
countering his common arguments for allowing misinformation in politician ads
&Some might argue our actions today could favor incumbents
But we have witnessed many social movements reach massive scale without any political advertising
I trust this will only grow.& Given President Trump had outspent all Democratic candidates on Facebook ads as of March of this year, it
clear that deep-pocketed incumbents could benefit from Facebook policy.
Trump continues to massively outspend Democratic rivals on Facebook
Via NYT
Miming Facebook position, Dorsey tweeted &It‘s not credible for us to say: ‘We&re working hard to stop people from gaming our
systems to spread misleading info, buuut if someone pays us to target and force people to see their political ad…well…they can say
whatever they want!&
Twitter doesn&t earn much from political ads, citing only $3 million in revenue from the 2018 mid-term elections, or
roughly 0.1% of its $3 billion in total 2018 revenue
That means there will be no major windfall for Facebook from Twitter dropping political ads
But now all eyes will be on Facebook and Google/YouTube
If Sundar Pichai and Susan Wojcicki move in line with Dorsey, it could make Zuckerberg even more vulnerable to criticism.
$330 million might
not be a big incentive for Facebook or Zuckerberg, but it still sounds like a lot of money to earn from ads that potentially lie to voters
I respect Facebook lenient policy when it comes to speech organically posted to users, organizations, or politicians& own accounts
But relying on the candidates, press, and public to police speech is dangerously idealistic
We&ve seen how candidates will do anything to win, partisan press will ignore the truth to support their team, and the public aren&t
educated or engaged enough to consistently understand what false.
Zuckerberg greatest mistakes have come from overestimating humanity
Unfortunately, not everyone wants to bring the world closer together
