Following social media’s decision not to regulate the content posted by politicians Joe Biden has become the first victim in the nonchalance we will no doubt see moving forward.
Former US vice president Joe Biden has approached Facebook and Twitter to remove a misleading advert being run by Donald Trump’s re-election campaign.
The advert in question claims that Biden promised Ukraine money if it fired a prosecutor investigating a company Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, had ties to. According to a report from The New York Times, CNN refused to air the advert as it made false accusations.
The advert can be seen below.
The falsehood in that advert is apparently the mention of Biden offering to pay Ukraine $1 billion to fire the aforementioned attorney. Biden has provided evidence that the claim is fake, according to reports.
But neither Facebook nor Twitter took issue with the advert (nor does YouTube where we plucked the video above from) and have refused Biden’s request to remove it.
Earlier this week the Biden campaign wrote to Facebook and Twitter to have the adverts removed for featuring misleading information.
“The ad you cited is not currently in violation of our policies,” a Twitter spokeperson told The Verge when asked about it.
As for Facebook, it’s taken a similar tack.
“Our approach is grounded in Facebook’s fundamental belief in free expression, respect for the democratic process, and the belief that, in mature democracies with a free press, political speech is already arguably the most scrutinized speech there is,” Facebook public policy director for global elections, Katie Harbath, wrote in a statement.
“Thus, when a politician speaks or makes an ad, we do not send it to third party fact checkers,” Harbath concluded.
As it stands the advert will remain up and while a false accusation may not seem like a big deal now, the more falsehoods that pop up, the harder it will become to find the truth.
While Facebook, Twitter and YouTube purport to be all about freedom of speech the fact that they aren’t – at the very least – sharing facts alongside these claims is rather disgusting.
With the 2016 US elections having been found to have been influenced by Russia and misleading information on social media it appears as if the forthcoming presidential race in the US will see history repeated so long as Zuckerberg and his Silicon Valley buds do nothing.
[Image – CC 0 Pixabay]
