After the 2016 election, Facebook weathered a Category 5 storm of criticism that political ads on its social network may have swayed the presidential vote. Since then, the company has tried to bend over backward to address the problem—only in some cases it appears to be bending too far.
Last month, Facebook introduced rules that imposed new requirements for advertisers buying political ads: U.S. Advertisers must prove that they reside in the country, while all political ads must include a “paid for by” disclaimer. Those ads would also feature a label that, when clicked upon, would reveal more information on the advertiser’s budget and the ad’s intended audience.
It didn’t take long for the unintended consequences of Facebook’s good intentions to show up. According to the New York Times, a number of small businesses—including hair salons, outdoor clothing makers, restaurants, and day-care centers—discovered that Facebook was rejecting their ads because its algorithms had determined them to be “political.”
Rob Leathern, Facebook’s director of product management, told the Times that the rejected ads “were mistakenly marked as political, and those decisions have been overturned.” Leathern admitted that such new policies at Facebook are “not going to be perfect at the start.”
In recent days, small businesses and other nonpolitical entities have taken to Twitter to express their anger and frustration at having their own Facebook ads rejected as too “political.”
Facebook rejected one of my ads because they thought the hyphen in my “Do-nut” pun was violating their rules and confused their bots. I told them to have a sense of humor and the error was quickly reversed. #PunningProblems 🍩
— Erica Fetherston (@blairez) June 20, 2018
I'm so unbelievably done with @facebook's algorithms. It just flagged a promotion I'm running for a job fair as "Political" and denied my ads. There's nothing in the text or image that have any kind of a political nature, none of the tags are political phrases, WHY!? Pic.twitter.com/LuegL0bl2z
— Matthew Curtis (@CourtesyOfMatt) June 14, 2018
Other people who sought to advertise things like podcasts, job fairs and city programs — which they did not consider to be at all political in nature — also reported that Facebook rejected their ads. That led to questions about how Facebook defines “political,” and what values it was basing that definition on.
These are things @facebook considers could be political and therefore rejected: civil rights, crime, education, environment, health, infrastructure, poverty, values. I'd love to read its definition of values. They include the creepy line…
— Andrew Geary (@spelledgeary) June 20, 2018
Just got another boost rejected. Both of these are about city programs, one about fentanyl testing strips and one about a city ban on bump stocks that is already in effect (aka not political ads). I'm appealing both but why is @facebook making this so difficult?
— Rebecca Reis (@rebareis) June 14, 2018
Small businesses have long been a crucial constituent of Facebook advertisers. Even small-business owners who don’t post frequently in their personal newsfeeds have come to value Facebook’s potential to connect them with consumers and audiences that they would never reach otherwise.
In April, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said the company has more than 80 million small businesses around the world that advertise or promote their businesses on the social network.