Facebook deems sending Christmas cheer to Trump political content.
Facebook should definitely get a lump of coal in their stockings this year.
The social media giant, still enforcing its nonsensical restrictions on political advertising in the post-election environment, won’t even let Americans for Limited Government boost a post telling Americans to wish President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump a Merry Christmas.
Humbug!
We even tried to boost a post sending one to Joe Biden as an experiment, stating nothing more than urging readers to “Wish former Vice President Joe Biden a Merry Christmas,” but still nothing. It was rejected, too.
Here, Facebook is still deciding to lose tens of millions of dollars by not running political ads, but it won’t even let organizations during Christmas tell folks to send holiday greetings to public figures like Trump or Biden.
Within a minute, the ads were rejected by the faceless Facebook algorithm.
Here’s what the apparently offensive post said: “Spread some Christmas cheer! Please wish the First Family a very Merry Christmas! ✨🎄 As we reflect on 2020, we are grateful for President Trump’s phenomenal leadership of our nation, which brought peace to places that never dreamed it possible and hope to Americans who had been left behind. Let them know how you feel now!”
Spread some Christmas cheer! Please wish the First Family a very Merry Christmas! ✨🎄
As we reflect on 2020, we are…
Posted by Americans for Limited Government on Tuesday, December 15, 2020
In other words, peace unto this Earth and good will toward man. That’s just a nice note to the First Family that at this time of year makes everyone involved feel good. But not Facebook, where even the mundane is political and must have doubt cast upon it.
Apparently even non-political things that are kind gestures during the Christmas season are simply the American, right thing to do, are now necessarily “political” if they involve public officials.
But it is not direct advocacy of the election or defeat of any candidate, or even specific support for public policy other than world peace.
Not that they’re stopping us from wishing the President Merry Christmas, but taken to its extreme, these social media companies are regulating what amounts to religious sentiment, in the context of political discourse.
And that is definitely not in the Christmas spirit.
In the meantime, Google lifted its own ban on post-election political ads a week ago as investors began asking questions about the Georgia runoffs for the two remaining seats in the U.S. Senate in January and why the premiere ad companies in the country are leaving so much money on the table when each party combined might spending more than $1 billion.
We’ve also bought many ads on Parler, the new alternative to Facebook and Twitter, where Americans for Limited Government has already found more than 50,000 new subscribers in a very short amount of time.
If Facebook wants to cede the ad market to their competitors, they are by all means welcome to abandon their market share. But it’s not in their interest, and it’s certainly not in the public interest, and these rules that apparently even ban even Christmas well wishes to Trump and Biden on the grounds they are somehow political are nothing more than a humbug.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.
