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The Observer

Elizabeth Warren trolls Facebook with 'false'

Zuckerberg ad
Ad claims CEO backs Trump – then admits it’s not true – after
company admits letting politicians make false statements

Julia Carrie Wong in San Francisco

@juliacarriew Email
Sat 12 Oct 2019 02.24 BST

Facebook has been taking heat all week for its decision to allow politicians to
make false statements in paid advertisements. Now the Democratic senator
and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren is taking the fight to the social
media company’s own turf by taking out a series of Facebook ads that make
false statements about Facebook and its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg.

“Breaking news: Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook just endorsed Donald

Trump for re-election,” the ads read, above a photograph of a recent Oval
Office meeting between the billionaire tech executive and the president.

Julia Carrie Wong

(@juliacarriew)

Elizabeth Warren is now running FB ads with a false statement about Mark
Zuckerberg and FB endorsing Trump for president, to draw attention to FB's
controversial policy allowing politicians to make false statements in ads.
https://t.co/hulwrb3cc3 pic.twitter.com/6zsPwXESKR

October 11, 2019

 The statement isn’t true, but as the Facebook executive Nick Clegg revealed
late last month, the company’s policies banning false statements from paid
advertisements do not apply to politicians.

The exemption has drawn particular attention due to Facebook’s decision to

allow Trump to run an ad that was rejected by CNN for promoting a
“demonstrably false” narrative about Joe Biden.

Warren’s ad does correct the record – neither Facebook nor Zuckerberg has
endorsed Trump – but goes on to argue her point: that “Facebook already
helped elect Donald Trump once” and that “It’s time to hold Mark Zuckerberg
accountable”.

Facebook's Warren has advocated for antitrust action against major

decision to tech companies and has called for Facebook to be broken up
promote Trump's
lies shows how it's into multiple smaller companies.
programmed
to protect the Last week, leaked transcripts of a July meeting at Facebook
powerful | Julia revealed that Zuckerberg had promised to “go to the mat”
Carrie Wong
and “fight” if Warren was elected and pursued her plan to
Read more break the company up. He also described her antitrust
proposal as an “existential” threat and said it would “suck
for us”.

Warren appears to relish the fight with Facebook. She shot back: “What
would really ‘suck’ is if we don’t fix a corrupt system that lets giant
companies like Facebook engage in illegal anticompetitive practices, stomp
on consumer privacy rights, and repeatedly fumble their responsibility to
protect our democracy.”

A Facebook spokesperson responded to the new ads to CNN, which first

reported on them, saying: “If Senator Warren wants to say things she knows
to be untrue, we believe Facebook should not be in the position of censoring
that speech.”

Topics
The
Facebook/ Observer
Elizabeth Warren/ Social networking/ Social media/ news

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