Facebook faced a test of the boundaries of its fact-checking policy after a liberal political action committee ran an ad claiming South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham backed the Green New Deal.
The ad from The Really Online Lefty League was removed from the platform as a violation of its advertising policies after it was rated false by Lead Stories, a third-party fact-checking site that works with Facebook to vet content.
The post from the organization featured a 90-second long video that was deceptively edited to make it appear as if Graham supported the Green New Deal, the proposal from New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that tackles climate change.
“From a Republican point of view, I think we need to look at the science, admit that climate change is real,” Graham says in the ad. “Simply put, we believe in the Green New Deal.”
The ad began running on Thursday but was removed after the fact-check from Lead Stories. The video accompanying the ad is still available on The Really Online Lefty League’s Facebook page.
Lead Stories said the ad would be permitted if it were posted by a politician, but “any third party posting the same claim would be eligible to be rated and since The Really Online Lefty League is not a politician (or running for office) Lead Stories has rated their ad as ‘False.’”
The ad was a real-life application of a question posed to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg by Ocasio-Cortez last week regarding what inaccurate information the tech giant would allow in political ads and from who.
[Read more: Mark Zuckerberg positions company as defender of free expression amid criticisms]
Ocasio-Cortez asked Zuckerberg whether Facebook would allow ads targeting Republicans in primary contests that erroneously said they supported the Green New Deal, to which the Facebook head said “probably.”
Facebook also took down ads from pro-Trump super PACs that targeted users in Arizona with messages about their voter registration, according to the Washington Post.
After President Trump’s reelection campaign ran ads on the site that included inaccurate information, Facebook said it would not fact-check ads from politicians that include false claims. The decision prompted fierce backlash from Democrats like former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, two Democratic presidential front-runners, and Zuckerberg was pressed on the policy while appearing before lawmakers last week.
Zuckerberg, however, defended his company’s policy, telling lawmakers last week that “in a democracy, it is important that people can see for themselves what politicians are saying.”
The heightened scrutiny on Facebook’s policies comes as the social media giant gears up for the 2020 presidential election and amid concerns it will not do enough to combat the spread of disinformation on the platform.
Facebook revealed last week it removed four campaigns that traced back to Russia and Iran that targeted the United States and spread disinformation and divisive content on social media.
