Biden campaign staff criticizes Facebook for ‘shredding the fabric of our democracy’

A member of Biden’s campaign staff publicly condemned Facebook for its handling of the election follow-up Monday night, saying it was “shredding the fabric of our democracy.”

Bill Russo, deputy director of communications for the Biden campaign, sent out a series of tweets criticizing Facebook’s handling of election-related disinformation and calls for violence. Russo specifically called out Facebook’s handling of posts by Steve Bannon, a former adviser to President Donald Trump, and the previously broadcast Bannon outlet, Breitbart.

The criticism could be an early indication of President-elect Joe Biden’s approach to the social media platform and potentially the tech industry as a whole. Biden gave some clues as to how he would handle the long list of concerns around the tech industry, which range from content moderation to antitrust issues.

But the few comments he’s given so far don’t bode well for the tech industry, and Facebook in particular.

“No, I’ve never been a fan of Facebook, as you probably know,” he told the New York Times editorial board, according to a transcript released in January. “I’ve never been a huge Zuckerberg fan. I think that’s a real problem.”

Biden also told The Times that he believed Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects technology platforms from liability for their users’ messages, should be “revoked.” This is a much bolder position than what most lawmakers across the aisle have said, given that the law also allows platforms to suppress objectionable messages, such as those that encourage violence. or harassment.

Facebook banned a network of Bannon-linked pages on Monday for “artificially boosting[ing]”the number of people who could see their posts on the platform. A group originally called” Stop the Steal, “which amplified Trump’s baseless claims about voter fraud, was among the pages Facebook has deemed to have violated its policies and removed. Bannon’s spokesperson did not comment on the dismissals on Monday.

But according to Russo, the action was too little too late. The group had previously exposed thousands of users to baseless theories and several more have emerged after its withdrawal, according to Russo.

Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Russo also slammed Facebook for keeping the Bannon page on its platform after Bannon called for the beheading of government infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci and Federal Bureau of Investigation director Christopher Wray. , in a podcast. Twitter suspended the podcast from its platform, and Google-owned YouTube also deleted the episode.

After Bannon published the episode, his lawyers defending him for defrauding donors to a nonprofit sought to be released from his case.

Russo likened Facebook’s approach to election disinformation with that of Twitter, which has more aggressive policies for labeling potentially misleading information. He claimed that while Twitter prevented the dissemination of Trump’s misleading election information, “Facebook continued to actively promote the posts in the feeds.”

Russo said in a tweet that the campaign had “pleaded with Facebook for over a year to be serious about these issues. They didn’t.”

The posts signal that Facebook should be subject to continued review under the Biden administration. The company has been the subject of an antitrust investigation by the Federal Trade Commission and a coalition of states for more than a year. The federal agency could lay charges against Facebook as early as this month, according to Politico.

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