Joe Biden’s presidential campaign will continue to promote Biden on Facebook amid a widespread boycott over the social media giant’s hate speech policy.
The Biden campaign, which has been critical of the social media platform’s free speech rules, said Wednesday that it would not join the growing list of companies pulling ads because “we cannot afford to cede these platforms,” according to CNN.
“We share the concerns of companies who are speaking up about Facebook’s inaction around making meaningful changes that protects our democracy,” Biden spokesman Bill Russo said in a statement. “But with less than five months until Election Day, we cannot afford to cede these platforms to Donald Trump and his lies. Our campaign will be present every day to get our message in front of every voter to ensure Trump doesn’t get another four years.”
Biden’s campaign has poured money into advertising on the platform. Since the former vice president became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, approximately half of the campaign’s total ad budget has gone to Facebook, according to Campaign Media Analysis Group data.
Facebook has faced mounting criticism in recent weeks ahead of the 2020 election for what some see as lax standards regarding the policing of content on its platform.
The Anti-Defamation League, the NAACP, Sleeping Giants, Color Of Change, Free Press, and Common Sense called for the boycott last month over the platform’s “repeated failure to meaningfully address the vast proliferation of hate on its platforms.”
“The campaign is a response to Facebook’s long history of allowing racist, violent, and verifiably false content to run rampant on its platform. The campaign will organize corporate and public pressure to demand Facebook stop generating ad revenue from hateful content, provide more support to people who are targets of racism and hate, and to increase safety for private groups on the platform, among other measures,” read a press release from the ADL announcing the #StopHateforProfit campaign.
The platform’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has been criticized for the policies, in particular when he said Facebook “shouldn’t be the arbiter of truth.”
