It’s a bad week to be Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
The 2020 Democratic presidential aspirant was resoundingly mocked for her cringe-worthy comments about “ghosting” meant to be relatable to millennials, or something. A poll showed the socialist-lite candidate struggling in New Hampshire despite being from neighboring Massachusetts. And now, Facebook has officially rejected Warren’s campaign clamoring and calls for censorship with its newly-released political advertisement policy.
Warren is a long-time critic of social media companies and purposely posted a false political ad to call attention to the fact that Facebook does not “fact-check” paid political advertisements. She’s since repeatedly blasted the company for supposedly holding democracy “hostage to their desire to make money.” Warren says Facebook “already helped elect Donald Trump once. Now, they’re deliberately allowing a candidate to intentionally lie to the American people.”
Long story short, Warren wants Facebook to censor her political opponents. Thankfully, though, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has rebuffed her demands, refusing to be the “arbiter of truth” and rightfully pointing out that “people [don’t] want to live in a world where you can only say things that tech companies decide are 100 percent true.” And Facebook released its official updated political advertisements policy on Thursday, with only minor changes made to encourage transparency. Despite the political pressure, it will continue to allow candidates to run ads free of censorship.
This is great news.
The problem with “fact-checking” political advertisements is that it’s an inherently subjective process, as so many issues are not cut-and-dry. And given the fact that Facebook’s staff overwhelmingly leans liberal, it’s highly likely that, conscious or not, their “fact-checks” would punish Republicans and conservatives much more than Democrats and liberals. Examples abound, but just consider, for instance, the fact that the liberal-leaning fact-checker Snopes regularly “fact checks” conservative satire website the Babylon Bee! Warren surely knows that censorship would favor her side, and it likely plays into her calculation.
Besides, it’s more than a little dystopian to think that tech platforms should decide what information we’re allowed to receive, or what candidates for office are allowed to tell voters. Aren’t they already powerful enough? If critics such as Warren really don’t want Facebook messing up our electoral process, then they shouldn’t want tech companies taking a side at all.
It’s funny, too, because if Facebook fact-checked advertisements honestly, it would have to reject all advertisements from Warren’s campaign pushing her bogus narrative about how she’ll pay for socialized healthcare without raising taxes on the middle class.
Thankfully, Facebook isn’t falling for Warren’s pro-censorship narrative. Hopefully, voters won’t either.
