Facebook voter drive inspires claims of bias

Bloomberg

An ambitious voter registration effort from Facebook has rankled President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign, which is complaining that the social network’s goal of registering 4 million voters in time for November’s election is an attempt to swing the election in favor of former Vice President Joe Biden.
“With knowledge of every user’s political ideology, Facebook is officially in the business of political advocacy and their efforts to silence conservative voices should be seen as nothing less than an attempt to ultimately benefit Biden and the Democrat Party,”
said Samantha Zager, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, when asked about Facebook’s voter registration plans.
Her comments follow on other grumbling from Republican strategists, including a
prediction that Gary Coby, Trump’s digital director, made last month on Twitter that Facebook’s effort would focus on swing state voters likely to favour Biden.
Facebook rejected the campaign’s claims. Emily Dalton Smith, who is helping to lead the voter registration effort, said the company won’t use ad targeting to determine who sees prompts to register. She described the effort as non-partisan.
A spokesman for the Biden campaign did not return a request for comment.
The reaction from the Trump campaign is an illustration that nothing Facebook does is ever viewed as politically neutral. Last week, Bloomberg News reported that Facebook was considering a blackout on political ads in the days before the election, a common practice in other countries.
The move was immediately condemned by civil rights groups, which called it a distraction that could potentially exacerbate voter suppression.
Facebook’s political dilemma took shape during the 2016 election, when conservatives stepped up accusations that it intentionally disfavoured right-wing messages.
The attacks have only increased, despite evidence that right-leaning content consistently spreads further than political posts that lean left.
In response, Facebook has taken a more permissive stance than rival social networks on content posted by the president and his campaign, leading to criticism that it is too willing to bend its rules to maintain an important political relationship.