Thursday, February 12, 2009

FACEBOOK EXPOSES ITS LIBERAL BIAS


As a user of Facebook I may have to rethink my use. The owners of Facebook have pulled a PAID ad for the following website: http://www.nostimulus.com

NoStimulus.com, which is promoting a petition to stop President Obama’s economic stimulus bill, is sponsored by the nonprofit conservative group Americans for Prosperity. Phil Kerpen, national policy director for Americans for Prosperity, said the paid ad had been running for days on Facebook with no problem. “They had already screened it and approved it,” says Kerpen. The petition featured in NoStimulus.com allows for those who oppose the stimulus bill to voice their objections, which are then sent to their respective lawmakers. “Congress should not enact an expensive spending bill under the pretense of stimulus or recovery,” reads the petition. “We cannot spend our way to prosperity, and such an expansion of the federal government will put a crushing burden on taxpayers in the long-term.” Once the NoStimulus.com Web site started getting a large volume of visitors, Kerpen told CNSNews.com, “they put a disapproval notice on it and they pulled the ad." Kerpen said Facebook told Americans for Prosperity that the ad violated two of its advertising rules – Rules 8 and 9. Rule 8 says that ads may not “contain, facilitate or promote “adult” content or content that is “offensive, profane, vulgar, obscene or inappropriate” or “defamatory, libelous, slanderous and/or unlawful.” Rule 9 prohibits a variety of content, including: --“Inflammatory religious content”; -- “Politically religious agendas and/or any known associations with hate, criminal and/or terrorist activities”; -- “Political content that exploits political agendas or uses ‘hot button’ political issues for commercial use regardless of whether the advertiser has a political agenda”; --“Hate speech, whether directed at an individual or a group, and whether based upon the race, sex, creed, national origin, religious affiliation, marital status, sexual orientation or language of such individual or group”; -- and “Content that advocates against any organization, person, or group of people, with the exception of candidates running for public office.” But Facebook, which confirmed that it took “NoStimulus.com” down, told CNSNews.com that it did so because of user complaints--and did not mention any violations of Rules 8 or 9. “At Facebook, we strive to create a trusted environment for our users and advertisers,” Facebook spokeswoman Erin Zietler said in an e-mail. “We encourage users to report any advertisements they find offensive or misleading, and we offer the ability for them to provide immediate feedback on our ads. We have a team dedicated to investigating ads and user complaints. “In this case, users informed us about misleading offers in many ads with promotions related to the U.S. economic stimulus package,” the spokeswoman said. “We are in the process of removing ads with these types of misleading offers as they are brought to our attention.” Kerpen, meanwhile, said that Facebook’s decision to bring down the ad bordered on censorship and was “completely inappropriate, because we are not commercial; we are a non-profit organization,” he said.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

So what were all the Obama, and to a much lesser extant McCain ads doing on Facebook? I can see people using the rating system to vote against no stimulus, what with all the Keynesians out there, and the controversy of the adds. That being said, Christians have been voting down those adds for singles that have sexual overtones for awhile now and they still havent been pulled.

Bill's Waste of Air said...

Well Jared, that is exactly the problem, Facebook was ALL OVER the Obama ads, and to a certain extent the McCain ads but you still see Obama ads but no Republican ads.
They try to use the information you have given in your personal files and posts to cater the ads YOU see to YOUR tastes, but, you are correct, they are posting some very obscene ads to EVERYONE.

The Blunt Matt said...

I suppose if you consider that Facebook is primarily used by the younger demographic, that would explain the Obama adds and the dislike for McCain. They youth seem to be fooled by Obama just like the religious right was fooled by Bush and, to a lesser extent, the Republican platform in general. I don't see their ads as offensive so much as just irritating. But I can tell you that the "liberal" media works the same way. There are numerous attempts every year by Adbusters to air their "non-commercials" that NBC, CBS, and ABC tell them are antithetical to their other sponsors and the capitalist message. In that vein, since I am a member of Facebook, I would consider the Sarah Palin factor as definitely offensive in the McCain ads that I saw on their site...therefore justifying pulling the ads...