Biden camp livid at Facebook as tech giant blocks ads from Democratic presidential campaign: report

On Thursday, Politico reported that members of Biden's campaign are criticizing Facebook for blocking political ads it had previously assured the campaign would not be subject to their political ad blackout in the final days before the election.

"Thousands of ads from Joe Biden’s campaign have been blocked by Facebook as part of the social media giant’s pre-election blackout on new political ads, which the Biden camp said erroneously swept up ads that had already been approved to run," reported Elena Schneider. "The ads have been down since Tuesday, Biden’s campaign said on Thursday evening, costing the Democratic presidential candidate a half-million dollars in projected donations and altering the advertising plan right before the election."

Among the ads affected, said Biden campaign officials, were ads clarifying to voters that Biden's plan will not raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 — which President Donald Trump has repeatedly sought to obfuscate.

"Facebook instituted a self-imposed ban on new political ads Monday night in an effort to limit the potential spread of misinformation around the election, but the policy generated new criticism this week for a 'technical glitch' that removed ads already running from Facebook’s system, hitting campaigns in both parties and cutting off certain messages to voters at the most inopportune time," said the report.

Facebook, said Biden digital director Rob Flaherty, has given "no clarity on the widespread issues that are plaguing all of our ad campaigns since the onset of their new ad restrictions" and must "take steps today to clearly rectify and explain the depth of this fiasco."

In a statement, Facebook acknowledged the error, saying, "even though the majority of political and issue ads have been unaffected, since the restriction took effect, we have identified a number of unanticipated issues affecting campaigns of both political parties. Some were technical problems."