Facebook has announced that it will not remove political advertisements on the grounds that the ads contain false statements:
"we do not submit speech by politicians to our independent fact-checkers, and we generally allow it on the platform even when it would otherwise breach our normal content rules."
However, Buzzfeed discovered that Facebook absolutely will remove political ads that are misleading to the eye, or violate other technical rules. For example, a pro-Trump advertisement was removed for profanity–it included a soundbite of Biden saying "son of a bitch." Facebook also removed dozens of pro-Biden ads that featured non-interactive graphics resembling buttons like the advertisements seen above. And Facebook is likely to remove any advertisement that mentions the state of Washington:
Last year, the state of Washington sued Facebook and Google for allegedly violating its campaign finance laws by failing to maintain data on the purchasers of election ads and later adopted new laws on ad disclosures. In response, Facebook implemented a blanket ban on "ads that relate to Washington's state or local elected officials, candidates, elections or ballot initiatives."
Accordingly, pro-Warren ads were removed for mentioning Washington governor Jay Inslee.
You can see the banned advertisements uncovered by Buzzfeed here.
