Former Vice President Joe Biden's presidential campaign is once again slamming Facebook, accusing it of "regression" when it comes to fighting misinformation on its platform.
Biden campaign manager Jen O'Malley Dillon wrote to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday in a letter published by Axios, saying that even after Zuckerberg in September announced steps the company would be taking to fight misinformation, "rather than seeing progress, we have seen regression." The campaign urges Facebook to take "meaningful action" against posts from President Trump making false claims about mail-in voting.
"Facebook's continued promise of future action is serving as nothing more than an excuse for inaction," Dillon said. "Millions of people are voting. Meanwhile, your platform is the nation's foremost propagator of disinformation about the voting process."
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Facebook has added labels to certain posts by Trump while leaving them online; for example, when Trump claimed that "ballots being returned to states cannot be accurately counted," Facebook attached a label saying "both voting in person and voting by mail have a long history of trustworthiness in the U.S." Facebook previously announced it would not accept new political ads in the week prior to Election Day.
The Biden campaign, though, writes that as Facebook leaves Trump posts online, the president "clearly understands that Facebook will not hold him to their clearly stated policies."
In an open letter in July, the Biden campaign condemned Facebook, calling for "clear rules — applied to everyone, including Donald Trump — that prohibit threatening behavior and lies about how to participate in the election." Facebook said in a statement at the time that "we live in a democracy, where the elected officials decide the rules around campaigns," adding, "there is an election coming in November and we will protect political speech, even when we strongly disagree with it."
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