The campaign office of Democratic presidential candidate, Joe Biden, has blamed Facebook for the more than $500,000 in potential campaign donations it had lost this week. Biden's campaign said Thursday that issues with Facebook's advertising systems had prevented it from running solicitations on its platform, resulting in the loss.
Following the claim, Facebook publicly acknowledged that it was experiencing "technical flaws" within its systems that prevented some users from running ads. According to Facebook, the issue had affected both presidential campaigns, which use the platform to solicit campaign donations from the public.
"We find ourselves five days out from Election Day unable to trust that our ads will run properly, or if our opponents are being given an unfair, partisan advantage," Biden campaign digital director, Rob Flaherty, said in a statement published Thursday.
Biden and his campaign have been publicly critical of Facebook and other social media platforms for allowing politicians to "speak lies" within their political ads without being fact-checked or restricted. Democratic politicians have claimed that the companies' negligence in removing fake information has given Trump and Republicans an unfair advantage.
Facebook clarified in its response that it did not pause or reject any ad because of "any bipartisan consideration." It said that the issue was mainly caused by a change in its political ad policies leading into the final week of the campaign.
In September, Facebook did state that it plans to limit the posting of new political ads during the final week of the campaign. This is to allow organizations and opponents to fact-check any assertions and statements made by candidates.
Facebook said that it attempted to apply those new policies Tuesday. Unfortunately, the change had caused some problems within its automated systems, including those that automatically review and approve ads before they go live.
Facebook representative, Andy Stone, said that the issues continued to persist through Thursday night. He added that some of the issues were caused by some users not understanding new instructions placed on its platforms concerning the new policies.
