Well, folks, we’ve got ourselves another showdown between a political campaign and Big Tech!
This time, it’s the Michigan Senate race, and Republican candidate Mike Rogers is throwing punches at Facebook for pulling his ad. What’s the ad about, you ask? Well, it’s pretty straightforward: Rogers is calling for men to stay out of women’s sports, a direct jab at his opponent, Rep. Elissa Slotkin, who supports trans-identifying men competing in women’s sports under the Equality Act.
Here’s where things get interesting: Rogers put this ad up on Facebook last Friday. And Facebook’s response? Yank! The ad got removed, not once, but four times. Yes, you heard that right. The first time it went down, Meta, Facebook’s parent company, cited “Unacceptable Business Practices.” But then, in a sudden twist of events, they backtracked, claiming the removal was a mistake — blamed on their automated review systems. You’ve got to love technology, right?
Rogers didn’t take this lying down. He took his message to X (formerly known as Twitter), and let’s just say, he wasn’t exactly mincing words. He called out “big tech activists” at Facebook for censoring his campaign, accusing them of trying to silence his views about fairness in sports and the protection of women’s privacy. In his eyes, this isn’t just a matter of policy—it’s about protecting the rights of women, and he’s not about to let Facebook get in the way of that message.
BREAKING: Time and again, big tech activists at Facebook have REMOVED our ad exposing Slotkin’s failures to protect our daughters. Biological men should not compete in women’s sports. This is about FAIRNESS for our daughters and privacy for women.
Thankfully, people like… https://t.co/M5WuqyjlPH
— Mike Rogers (@MikeRogersForMI) October 21, 2024
But here’s where things really heat up: with the election just two weeks away, Rogers and his team didn’t have time to waste. They were reposting that ad repeatedly over the weekend, trying to make sure it stayed up long enough for voters to see it. Meanwhile, Meta scrambled to clarify the situation, issuing a statement admitting the removal was a mistake and that the ad had been restored.
But this brings up a larger question, doesn’t it? With Meta leaning more heavily on artificial intelligence for content moderation, especially since the pandemic, there’s bound to be some hiccups. Meta even rolled out a new AI system called “Few-Shot Learner” to tackle evolving content issues faster. Sounds fancy, but in this case, it seems that AI got it wrong.
Meta’s content policies are getting even stricter as we approach Election Day, with plans to block all new political ads in the final week.
The company says this is to prevent last-minute misinformation from spreading too fast to correct. But for Rogers, who’s closing the gap on Slotkin—now trailing by just 2.1 points—timing is everything. And if you’re in a heated race like this one, every ad, every post, and every voter counts.