- Joe Biden’s campaign declared war on Facebook over what it called a failure to properly police misinformation from his rival, President Donald Trump.
- The campaign said that Facebook had not lived up to its own promises to clamp down on misinformation on topics like voting.
- It claimed that Facebook has instead become worse since promising to step up its moderation.
- Biden staffers threatened to repeatedly call out Facebook for the remaining 36 days of the election cycle.
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Presidential candidate Joe Biden attacked Facebook over its handling of posts by his rival, President Donald Trump, and claimed that the platform is not keeping its own promises to fight misinformation.
Axios published a three-page later by campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
It said the platform had failed to stop misinformation about the election, and had actually gotten worse since making public commitments.
“Earlier this month, Facebook committed to finally acting on its ‘responsibility to protect our democracy’ by ‘clearing up confusion about how this election will work’ and by ‘fight[ing] misinformation about how to participate,” the email said.
“On the same day, Mr.Trump took to your platform to spread falsehoods about mail voting, and Facebook took no meaningful action.
“We were told then that Facebook was working to determine how best to apply its new, more aggressive approach.
“Three weeks have now passed. Rather than seeing progress, we have seen regression.”
Facebook has come under huge pressure to prevent the spread of misinformation during the coronavirus pandemic and in the run up to the November presidential election.
Trump’s posts have been a special challenge. They include him sharing opinions about mail-in voting that contradict expert views and appearing to encourage people to vote twice.
The Biden campaign letter said that the way Facebook has failed to do what it promised, and threatened to repeatedly call out the company in the days before November 3.
The letter said: “As you say, ‘voting is voice.’ Facebook has committed to not allow that voice to be drowned out by a storm of disinformation, but has failed at every opportunity to follow through on that commitment.
“We will be calling out those failures as they occur over the coming 36 days.”
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