Mark Zuckerberg has become the single most powerful person in political advertising through his company, Facebook. Millions turn to Facebook every day to find out what is going on in the world, far more than use any other news medium, including television and newspapers.
Facebook, which started as a platform to facilitate hookups for students at Harvard, has evolved first to a tool used by thousands to keep up with friends and eventually to become the primary purveyor of news both accurate and inaccurate.
Facebook has become fantastically profitable by helping advertisers target their messages directly at the users most likely to buy their products. Political campaigns soon took notice, paying to direct their messages to the voters that they want to reach and influence.
Dark forces in the political world also realized the potential to exploit Facebooks capabilities. In the 2016 presidential election, Facebook became the medium of choice for Russian disinformation agents who tried to harm Hilary Clinton and help Donald Trump win. The Mueller inquiry documented Russian interference in the election.
Even Zuckerberg realized that his company needed to tighten its rules, and it has made some progress.
But with another presidential election looming, and fears growing that Russia, China and others might try to skew the results, Zuckerberg has staked out a position on political speech that is inviting bad actors to confuse and misinform voters once again.
Wrapping himself in the mantle of a firm defender of free expression, Zuckerberg is really seeking to abdicate any responsibility to keep craven political campaigns from using his company to undermine our democracy.
Zuckerberg says his policies seek to avoid having his company or any others decide what political speech should be allowed. That is the right stance. Neither Facebook nor any other social media company should censor political speech.
But he went on to extend this hands-off policy to allow campaigns to have their lies promoted by Facebook, if they are willing to pay extra. That is a reprehensible distortion of the right of free speech. Free speech is protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but it is not an absolute right. You cannot tell lies about other people without being sued for libel.
In the media business, newspaper publishers are held liable for publishing lies, and that is as it should be. The libel laws include prohibitions on publishing lies in advertising. If The News-Post were to allow one candidate to tell a complete falsehood about another candidate in a campaign ad, we could be sued for libel along with the candidate whose advertising contains the lie.
The same holds true for television networks. The networks have standards departments to weigh the truthfulness of advertising, both political and commercial.
You can be harshly critical of another candidate, and you can express a negative opinion about their fitness for office. But you cannot simply lie about the facts.
When Facebook wants to sell advertising, it brags about the millions who turn to it for the news. However, when it does not want to take responsibility for the content of advertising, it argues that it is not a publisher, only a platform.
If Facebook wants to be the worlds go-to news source, the company should at least familiarize itself with some of the basic practices that responsible news outlets have followed for generations.
Guaranteeing the rights of everyone to political speech is not the same as allowing everyone to blatantly tell lies. We in the newspaper business have managed to make that distinction quite well, thank you, and have been able to do so without billions of dollars behind us. Facebook obviously has the resources to vet advertising, if it wants to.
