Facebook Announces It Will Lift Post-Election Ban on Political Ads for Georgia Runoff Races
Photo credit: Loic Venance, Getty Images
Facebook announced that it will narrowly lift the platform-wide ban on political ads it implemented for the period after the 2020 election — and now permits campaign ads related to the twin Georgia runoff races for the U.S. Senate.
On Tuesday, the social media giant put out a statement saying that it was lifting its ban for Georgia special elections races as of Wednesday, December 16th. However, the company claimed that its suspension of the ban was geographically limited to accounts located inside the state of Georgia.
According to HuffPost’s Daniel Marans, Facebook cited “feedback from experts and advertisers across the political spectrum about the importance of expressing voice and using our tools to reach voters ahead of the Georgia US Senate runoff elections next month.”
Facebook is making an exception to its ban on political ads for the Georgia runoff. Ads start tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/SRTYiZiOPU
— Daniel Marans (@danielmarans) December 15, 2020
As a result, “eligible advertisers” will now be able to resume political ads on Facebook feeds inside the state. But it said that it will “reject ads that target locations outside of Georgia or that are not about the runoff elections for violating our Advertising Policies.”
Facebook has come under intense scrutiny for being a primary vector for spreading political misinformation and has increasingly cracked down on false claims in the post-Election Day period. And one of the main targets of its content warnings has been President Donald Trump, who has continually pushed numerous conspiracy theories about the Georgia election last month and warned that that state’s runoffs will be irrevocably tainted unless he is retroactively awarded the state.
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