Facebook banned ads from a super PAC backing President Donald Trump called the Committee to Protect the President Thursday for repeatedly sharing false information flagged by third-party fact checkers.
“As a result of the Committee to Defend the President’s repeated sharing of content determined by third-party fact-checkers to be false, they will not be permitted to advertise for a period of time on our platform,” a Facebook spokesperson told TheWrap. That period of time was not defined.
In a statement to TheWrap, Committee chairman Ted Harvey said, “Facebook is determined to restrict free speech and attack those who dare to support President Trump. When their liberal, Trump-hating ‘fact-checkers’ complained about the Committee’s first ad for correctly calling out Joe Biden, we changed it. When those same ‘fact-checkers’ didn’t bother to check the facts or even watch our second ad, they still banned us.
The Committee will not be silenced by ‘woke’ Silicon Valley elites, as we expose the real Joe Biden. We have reallocated our entire Facebook budget to other online platforms, so Americans can see the whole truth–not just Facebook’s truth.”
The ban comes one day after FactCheck.org, one of the fact-checking partners used by the social media platform, found that a television ad from the PAC that also ran on Facebook was false. The ad targets presumed Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, who will be facing off against Trump in the November election.
According to FactCheck, the ad falsely claims that Biden “promised his party an African American Vice President. Not a Latino.” The Committee ran the ad on Facebook July 31.
“As a narrator speaks in Spanish, and as photos of several Latino politicians and political analysts are shown, the translated text on screen says: ‘We came from all over. We built skyscrapers and successful businesses. Risked everything, even our own lives, to make America home. But that wasn’t good enough for Joe Biden. He’s promised his party an African American Vice President. Not a Latino,’” reports FactCheck, which found “no evidence” Biden made such a claim.
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