Facebook’s lobbyists recently teamed up with Maryland legislators to craft what they call a “national model” for regulating ads on social media. The resulting law is so bad for free speech online that Gov. Larry Hogan warned it may be unconstitutional, and the Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Press Association threatened a lawsuit. Yet that isn’t stopping Facebook and other tech companies from pushing Congress to adopt a similar plan nationwide.
For Facebook, government regulation of political and issue ads on its platform is the lesser of two evils. Russian interference in the 2016 election, which involved the purchasing of politically-charged Facebook ads, has sparked calls for government to regulate the social media giant. It has also raised awareness of the way Facebook’s business model relies on collecting data on its users and allowing advertisers to target users with messages designed to appeal to their interests.
