A group that is backed by the tech mogul is using fake ads on Facebook to promote their cause
False Information about Sarah Harris’ Candidate for the Preterm Presidential Running Electoral Campaign, David Weissman, in an interview with opensecrets
There are several ads that look like they are from the Harris campaign and they are spreading false information about her policies. One ad says Harris wants to ban the practice. None of this is true.
Musk personally distributed the first of these checks at a pro- Trump event in Pennsylvania and hasn’t let the Department of Justice’s warning that the lottery may be illegal stop him.
“Whether they are impactful is another question, but they are highly likely to deceive,” he said. The only way to know if they are not real is if you are a highly informed voter.
Weissman said that lies framed as if they are coming from the candidate goes beyond a brazen distortion and is a common political messaging tactic.
According to the site, Harris has a chance to create sweeping reforms before she takes office, and launch a series of policies that she does not support in the race.
Open Secrets found that Progress 2028 also sent text messages to potential voters making false claims about Harris’ policy positions with a link to the Progress 2028 web page, which gives the impression it is a group backing Harris for president, when the opposite is true.
Progress 2028, Google, and Meta are the losers of the first amendment: Why Facebook, Facebook, and Twitter are responsible for the deceit
Weissman says this is not enough. Weissman said Meta is 100 percent responsible for permitting the deception. There is a First Amendment right to lie but it does not affect the management of advertisements on its platform.
When political advertising was banned after the 2020 election, they will be able to resume it after November 5. If votes are still being counted then, Google will block election ads to prevent them from being spread in the future.
Daniels said deceptive political ads have been deployed “across the media landscape for decades,” adding that Meta’s Ad Library, where the reach of ads can be viewed, “brings a level of transparency to political advertising that far exceeds that of any other platform where these ads have run.”
Meta spokesman Ryan Daniels would not comment directly on the Progress 2028 ads, which were first highlighted by the tech news site 404 Media. The ads are in line with the rules of Meta, which generally require that the entity paying for the ad be disclosed. The rules also ban premature claims of victory and ads that question the legitimacy of the election process.
“It truthfully discloses who is paying for the ad, but that entity sounds like a Harris supporting organization, when it is not,” said Weissman, who has called on Meta to remove the ads.
Robert Weissman, co-president of the nonprofit watchdog group Public Citizen, said that in this case, the disclosure at the bottom of the ad stating the advertisement was “paid for by Progress 2028” fuels the deceit.
The ad buys are publicly available in an ad library database hosted by Meta, Facebook’s parent company. The group has posted 13 ads so far. As of Wednesday afternoon, Meta tallied the ads as having received 8.7 million impressions, although some viewers may have seen the same ads multiple times.
The First Amendment protects political speech when it contains lies, according to experts. But the messages have the potential to lead voters astray just days before the election.