The campaign to recall Gavin Newsom this week shared the false allegation that Facebook tried to ‘shut down’ the recall effort.
Chris Nichols, reporter for PolitiFact in California, spoke to CapRadio anchor Mike Hagerty about it in the Can You Handle The Truth segment this week.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Maintenance highlights
About what the recall campaign said about Facebook’s actions
The recall campaign spreads false information through its Instagram account. It shared a blog post stating that Facebook is trying to “turn off” the recall effort by not allowing ads to be placed on its platform.
We found that it was just a major distortion of what happened. In fact, Facebook announced last fall that it would stop accepting all political ads, regardless of party affiliation. The aim was to limit the dissemination of misinformation, so there is no evidence that the Newsom recall campaign was singled out.
“One of the new policies we are announcing is that we will be blocking new policies and advertisements this past week of the campaign,” Zuckerberg told CBS This Morning last September.
Facebook extended the policy further to December.
It then made an exception to the U.S. run-down to the Senate in Georgia before resuming its ban on political advertising in January.
About what political campaigns can do on Facebook if they can no longer buy ads
In the case of the recall campaign, they can do many things. They have a strong presence on Facebook that includes a public group where more than 20,000 members share information about future memories.
They still have 16,000 followers on Instagram, which is owned by Facebook.
We considered the allegation that Facebook was targeting the Newsom recall campaign to be untrue.
About the allegation that Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House, bought Tesla shares shortly before Biden signed the executive order that all federal vehicles must be electric
Our national partner PolitiFact looked at an image shared on Facebook and claimed that Pelosi had bought more than $ 1 million in Tesla Stock. Tesla is the electric car manufacturer in California.
According to this claim, Pelosi made the purchase a day before President Joe Biden signed an order that all federal vehicles must be electric.
PolitiFact has found some issues with this claim. Pelosi’s husband did buy stock options in Tesla for up to $ 1 million, but that was back in December, and not the day Biden signed his order.
Speaker Pelosi did announce the purchase as required by law.
PolitiFact also found that Biden’s directive only requires federal agencies to move to vehicles without exemption – it does not require them to buy electric vehicles.
PolitiFact also pointed out that Biden has made it clear throughout the presidential campaign that he wants the federal navy to move in this direction, so the goal is actually no secret.
“We need to move towards a net release,” Biden said during the final presidential debate. ‘The first place to do that by 2035 is energy production. By 2050 completely. ”
PolitiFact has mostly considered the allegation that Pelosi used insider information to buy shares to be false.
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