00:00Today on Forbes, Facebook took more than $1 million for ads sowing election lies.
00:09Just six days before the 2024 presidential election, Facebook was running hundreds of
00:13ads from pages that falsely claim that the upcoming election may be rigged or postponed.
00:20Facebook parent company Meta's ad library shows that the pages behind the ads have paid
00:25the company more than $1 million to run them.
00:28They racked up a bill of more than $350,000 for ads run in just the past week.
00:34The ads were live as of Wednesday.
00:37One of the ads features a stylized image of Vice President Kamala Harris with devil horns
00:43and an American flag burning behind her.
00:46Other ads feature images of Harris and VP candidate Tim Walz interposed with post-apocalyptic
00:52scenes and pictures of Walz and President Biden mashed up with images of prescription
00:57drugs spilling out of bottles.
00:59One features an apparently AI-generated image of a smiling Harris in a hospital room preparing
01:05to give a screaming child an injection.
01:08Another features images of anti-vaxxer and third-party candidate RFK Jr.
01:14Some of the ads question whether Harris will remain in the race and suggest that America
01:19is, quote, headed for another civil war.
01:23Meta's election rules prohibit posts containing, quote, misinformation about the dates, locations,
01:29times, and methods of voting, and, quote, misinformation about whether a candidate is
01:34running or not.
01:36And its ad rules prohibit ads that, quote, call into question the legitimacy of an upcoming
01:41or ongoing election.
01:44Many of the ads direct viewers to a page where they can purchase writings by Jim Rickards,
01:49a fringe economist turned conspiracy theorist and proponent of the New World Order conspiracy
01:54theory.
01:56Others direct people to a page falsely claiming that a, quote, uniparty will win the election
02:01for Big Pharma.
02:03Meta spokesperson Ryan Daniels said, quote,
02:11Rickards, the fringe economist, did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
02:18Forbes identified the false ads through the Meta ad library, a live repository of ads
02:22run on the company's platforms, which provides details about political advertisers and how
02:27much money they spend.
02:29Forbes did not find parallel ads in Google's ad library.
02:33TikTok and X have ad libraries in Europe, where they are required by law, but keep their
02:38U.S. advertisers, and their ad spend, secret.
02:43Meta has a fraught history with election misinformation.
02:46In 2016, Russia's Internet Research Agency used both ads and so-called organic posts
02:53on Facebook to manipulate and divide U.S. voters, steering them toward the candidacy
02:58of Donald Trump.
03:00In 2020, Facebook and WhatsApp were widely used by disgruntled supporters of former President
03:05Trump to spread so-called stop-the-steal conspiracy theories and orchestrate the January 6, 2021
03:12attack on the U.S. Capitol.
03:15Since 2021, Meta has dramatically reduced the amount of political posts that it serves
03:20to users, which may increase the power of paid political ads in reaching Facebook users
03:26with a candidate's or party's message.
03:28This year, Vice President Kamala Harris has dramatically outspent former President Donald
03:33Trump on Facebook ads.
03:35In 2020, Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, donated more than
03:41$400 million to nonpartisan election integrity groups, including the Center for Election
03:47Innovation and Research and the Center for Tech and Civic Life.
03:51The groups are focused on improving election infrastructure and do not endorse candidates.
03:57Zuckerberg does not appear to have continued his election integrity giving in 2024.
04:03For full coverage, check out Emily Baker White's piece on Forbes.com.
04:08This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes.
04:11Thanks for tuning in.
Comments