Elizabeth Warren Steps Up Her Criticisms Against Facebook's Ad Policy

Senator Elizabeth Warren has stepped up her battle with the tech giant, Facebook in a series of new tweets, accusing the company’s policy on political advertising.

Warren’s campaign had intentionally published an ad on Facebook with a false claim that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was in cahoots with President Donald Trump, to see whether it would get approved.

According to Warren, the ad got approved “quickly” and began running on Facebook. She tweeted a picture of the same.

Warren stepped up her fight at a time when the social networking giant has come under a lot of criticism for allowing politicians to run ads that spread falsehoods. According to her, Facebook, which holds power to affect elections, has let politicians lie to the users and did nothing in the battle to prevent misinformation from spreading.

"Once again, we’re seeing Facebook throw its hands up to battling misinformation in the political discourse, because when profit comes up against protecting democracy, Facebook chooses profit," Warren said.

Facebook had allowed Trump to publish an ad which criticized his political rival Joe Biden. The ad claimed it had facts about the Bidens and Ukraine, but it was a misleading 30-second video. News sites including CNN and NBC did not run the video message as it made false accusations.

However, when Biden’s Presidential campaign asked Facebook to take the video down, they refused, saying, the ad did not violate any policies. According to their current policies, Facebook does not subject politicians' ads to third-party fact-checking, which according to Warren lets them earn money by spreading false information.

Facebook hit back at Warren’s criticisms that they took money to promote lies by saying that the Federal Communications Commission "doesn’t want broadcast companies censoring candidates’ speech."

"We agree it’s better to let voters — not companies — decide," Facebook said.

"It is not our role to intervene when politicians speak," Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president of global affairs and communications said in a speech last month.

This is not the first time Warren and Facebook have been at loggerheads, with the 2020 Democratic candidate hitting back at the company after an audio of Zuckerberg’s Q&A session with his employees was leaked.

In the audio Zuckerberg said that it would suck if Warren were elected president.