Joe Biden’s campaign sent a scathing letter Monday to Facebook accusing the social media giant of not upholding its own policies by allowing President Donald Trump and his campaign to post disinformation about the upcoming election.

What You Need To Know

  • In a letter, Joe Biden's campaign accused Facebook of not enforcing its own policies regarding voting disinformation

  • Biden Campaign Manager Jen O'Malley Dillon cited several examples from Trump's campaign that Facebook has not removed

  • Biden's campaign says it will call out Facebook's "failures" in the days leading up to the election

  • Facebook says Republicans and Democrats are calling for different courses of action and that it applies it rules protecting election integrity impartially

In the three-page letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Biden Campaign Manager Jen O’Malley Dillon makes reference to Zuckerberg’s Sept. 3 announcement that the platform shared in a “a responsibility to protect our democracy” and would take steps to clear up “confusion about how this election will work.”

But O’Malley Dillon said the Trump campaign has continued to share misleading information that has remained visible to millions of Facebook users, including an attack on the integrity of mail-in voting on the very day Zuckerberg vowed to crack down on such statements. 

“Rather than seeing progress, we have seen regression,” O’Malley Dillon writes. “Facebook’s continued promise of future action is serving as nothing more than an excuse for inaction. Millions of people are voting. Meanwhile, your platform is the nation’s foremost propagator of disinformation about the voting process.”

One of the examples Team Biden cited was a Sept. 21 video that featured Donald Trump Jr. In it, the president’s son claims Democrats have a “plan to add millions of fraudulent ballots that can cancel your vote and overturn the election.” 

He then implores “every able-bodied man, woman to join Army for Trump’s election security operation” to keep watch over early voting, polling sites on Election Day and counting boards. The video includes a graphic that reads “ENLIST NOW.”

Facebook has not removed the video but added a label that appears near it that reads, “Voting by mail has a long history of trustworthiness in the US and the same is predicted this year” and cites the the Bipartisan Policy Center as the statement’s source.

O’Malley Dillon writes that the label is insufficient is likely to be overlooked by many. She says the post violates Facebook’s policies and commitment to stopping users from undermining democracy. 

“No company that considers itself a force for good in democracy, and that purports to take voter suppression seriously, would allow this dangerous claptrap to be spread to millions of people,” she writes. “Removing this video should have been the easiest of easy calls under your policies, yet it remains up today.”

The Biden campaign also criticized Facebook for allowing Trump to use the platform to repeatedly urge voters who cast mail-in ballots to also show up at polling places on Election Day and demand to vote again unless poll workers can prove their first vote was already counted.

The campaign says the message violates the social media platform’s policies because it casts doubt on whether mail-in ballots will be counted and is a “misrepresentation about voting logistics, methods, or requirements,” noting that in many states mail-in ballots are not counted until Election Day. Trump also encouraged illegal behavior, the Biden campaign said, because it is against the law in many states to vote in person after having submitted a mail-in ballot.

Team Biden says in the letter that Trump realizes that Facebook will not enforce its policies when it comes to disinformation. The campaign  promised to call out Facebook’s “failures” over the days leading up to the Nov. 3 election. 

“Mr. Trump and his allies are hijacking this model to sow distrust in our democracy,” O’Malley Dillon writes. “You have committed not to allow that to happen. Yet you do allow it to happen--time and again.” 

Biden’s campaign manager also made reference to recent reports that Facebook’s decision-making is being influenced “by the preference and identity of those in office.”

“That is not empowerment of individual voices, which you say is the founding principle of Facebook; instead, it is catering to those who already have power,” O’Malley Dillon writes.

In a statement, a Facebook spokesperson said: “While many Republicans think we should take one course, many Democrats think we should do the exact opposite. We’ve faced criticism from Republicans for being biased against conservatives and Democrats for not taking more steps to restrict the exact same content. We have rules in place to protect the integrity of the election and free expression, and we will continue to apply them impartially."

In an email to Spectrum News, Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh responded to the letter by saying only, “Silicon Valley can’t help Joe Biden hide his 47 years of failure.”