Facebook says it’s removing Trump campaign’s ‘census’ ads

This story is part of Elections 2020, CNET’s full coverage of the 2020 elections.

Facebook said Thursday that it’s removing ads from President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign that could create confusion about the 2020 US Census.

The ads directs supporters to take a survey the campaign calls the “Official 2020 Congressional District Census.” Facebook’s decision comes after critics, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, slammed Facebook for not removing the ads because people might mistaken the campaign’s survey with the official US Census. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence ran the ads on their Facebook pages a week before people can start answering US Census questions.

The move shows how Facebook can still take action against political speech even if it doesn’t send posts from politicians to fact checkers. The company has pushed back against allegations it censors conservative speech, but it has also stayed away from being the “arbiter of truth.” In December, the company said that it would ban misleading posts and ads that aim to prevent people from participating in the 2020 US census. Those rules also apply to politicians. 

The census, which takes place every 10 years, helps determine which states and communities get billions of dollars in federal funding and the number of seats each state gets in Congress. Misinformation about the census is already floating around and the US Census Bureau had asked Facebook, Google and Twitter to help fend off “fake news.” 

“There are policies in place to prevent confusion around the official U.S. Census and this is an example of those being enforced,” a Facebook spokesman said in a statement about the removal of the Trump campaign ads.

Political newsletter Popular Information reported earlier on Thursday that Facebook initially said that thousands of Trump ads didn’t violate its policy that barred census interference because it included information about the campaign. Vanita Gupta, president of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of 200 civil rights groups that helped the company create the policy, disagreed with the decision. So did Pelosi who called Trump campaign’s survey “an absolute lie,” according to the Associated Press.The survey that the Trump campaign refers to as a “census” asks people about whether they will vote for Trump, their political party, age and other information.

By early Thursday afternoon, Facebook said it would take down the ads. Facebook’s public ads database show some of these ads are still up. A spokesman said they are in the process of removing them.

“While we’re gratified that Facebook shut down Trump’s attempt to sow confusion about how and when to participate in the 2020 Census, it’s disturbing that the ads weren’t immediately removed,” Gupta said in a statement.

Trump’s campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment.