I expected to hear reports of heated calls between Facebook executives and campaign officials or, perhaps, with bromide exchanges between Mr. Biden and mr. Zuckerberg. The reality was more mundane.
According to Biden staffers, top executives rarely handled the campaign, even after it lamented the flawed use of Facebook and the rampant dissemination of politically incorrect information and disinformation in public. Some of the campaign’s requests to explain the policy were, according to them, answered with short e-mail responses and contained the same lines of policy implementation that were handed out to reporters. In other cases, there was no response to them.
A senior Facebook employee, who worked closely with the Biden campaign during the election, offered a different characterization of events. The employee, who is a Democrat and has previously worked in Democratic politics, argued that the company met regularly with the campaign and hosted several briefings on new policies. Facebook has investigated policy decisions on content brought by the campaign.
The employee described the relationship as productive and even collegial despite tense circumstances. ‘The fundamental difference of opinion at the end of the day was around these policy decisions. “They wanted us to be more aggressive about Trump – specific content and adjacent posts of his allies,” the employee said. “We believe we have taken an aggressive approach and implemented policies that have enabled us to agree to content related to consent, and to reduce repression efforts.”
The employee argued that Facebook was responding to the Biden campaign, although the company would not disclose internal statistics or other information in certain circumstances.
“They did not ignore us,” said a senior Biden official. ‘Facebook simply did not want to deal with the issues we raised. They had nothing material to say and knew we would call them on their ride. All we keep asking is, ‘Will you really exercise the corporate judgment that you preach?’ What could they say about it? No?”
The Biden campaign therefore saw the light of day. Repeatedly. In October 2019, the campaign sent a letter to Facebook after a Republican super-PAC released a video ad accusing Biden of blackmailing Ukrainian officials into stopping an investigation into Hunter Biden. In June, the campaign issued an open letter urging Facebook to ‘stop allowing politicians to hide behind paid misinformation’. By the end of September, the campaign had made the company public again as ‘the country’s leading distributor of disinformation about the voting process’, according to an email Axios received.