I don't think Facebook is really pushing back on this because it's a free speech issue. They're pushing back because it's technically and financially challenging to do. If claims in political ads were easily falsifiable, they probably would have done this a long time ago.
Activism-driven policy is generally not a great governance model - you might satisfy the 250 employees who signed the letter, but disgruntle 5000 silent others who strongly believe it's not Facebook's job to fact-check political ads.
If FB starts fact-checking political ads, that to me would be one step closer to Facebook being a 'publisher' rather a 'platform', which would open Facebook up to a world of litigation when something nefarious or disagreeable slips through the cracks to the public. And of course, after political ads, what's next? Should they limit certain dietary advice if the purported results are not sufficiently substantiated?<p>Another question would be - how are the 'lies' to be limited? Are the posts hidden, or marked with a "fake news" indicator? What if 80% of the content in an ad is true but the other 20% is unsubstantiated? Does that get tagged as well? "Partial fake news"? If Facebook implemented something like this, would they be open and transparent about how their site goes about verifying claims in ads so that the users can go straight to the source(s)?<p>With all of Facebook's missteps and mistakes in the past, who really wants them to be the arbiter of truth? Would people even trust them to be the arbiter of truth? Or would Facebook's efforts to mitigate or limit certain ads embolden the political side represented by that ad? (Not to generalize, but there are certainly some out there who are immediately dismissive of claims of truth when they come from Fox News/CNN, depending on their political persuasion).<p>It would seem more logical to me for Facebook to fund and coordinate some kind of 'awareness' campaign on the site in which it guides its users as to the level of skepticism to maintain when seeing political ads and how to go about verifying the veracity of claims in political ads they might see.
This is getting to be a growing trend in Silicon Valley: employees demanding of their management and even CEOs certain action. Whether California a "right to work" state or not, I imaging employees demanding management do something that management doesn't want to do is grounds for dismissal. Are workers being let go for "standing up to management" like this?
This is coming from 250 of Facebook's 35,000 employees which equates to about .7% of their employees. You will always have a small group within that number of people that will be vocal about something, so this is definitely not an uprising.
Per usual, nerdy engineers think they know it all. For example: "free speech and paid speech are not the same thing" -- this is <i>literally</i> what Citizens United v. FEC decided. It's the same thing. Read the damn law. <i>Ought</i> it be the same thing? Who knows. Maybe, maybe not. Don't agree with the status quo? Get out there, hit the streets, knock on doors, and get the law changed. SCOTUS doesn't make laws, and Facebook sure as hell doesn't make laws.<p>But internet outrage and strongly-worded letters are a lot easier than actually organizing grassroots campaigns and getting people elected to Congress.
Is "I will do x/y/z" a lie? Given how often politicians actually keep their promises you can say most candidates knew their promises were lies
The decision that solves a lot of problems is for social media sites to just not allow political ads of any kind.<p>How much of their revenue is based on political ads?
Might as well ask Zuck to hsve FB observe “business hours”. No service between 11PM and 5AM local times to protect users from over use and engagement. Set a limit on ads per hour per user. I’m sure he’ll see why they are great ideas.
250/35000 staff signed the letter.<p>I guess "Less than 1% of FB employees demand Zuckerberg limit lies in political ads" doesn't have the same ring to it. I guarantee you can find more FB employees who believe the earth is flat, or are 9/11 truthers than the percent that signed this letter.