Political Advertising

According to a report by AdAge, the Trump Campaign has booked $147.2 million worth of TV ads for the time between July 10 and the 2020 Election, with most of the budget being spent from Labor Day on. In comparison, the Biden campaign has only spent $1.5 million for the same period.

Facebook has taken down several ads and posts by the Trump campaign for using a Nazi-related imagery. The ads contained an image of an inverted red triangle, a symbol used in concentration camps to identify political dissidents. The Trump campaign responded to a user on Twitter, claiming it was a "symbol widely used by Antifa. It was used in an ad about Antifa", and adding that it wasn't in the ADL's Hate Symbol Database.

Facebook said in a statement that they removed the posts and ads as they were violating their policy against organised hate and that their "policy prohibits using a banned hate group’s symbol to identify political prisoners without the context that condemns or discusses the symbol".

Facebook announced on Tuesday that users in the U.S. now have the option to opt-out of seeing political ads on their platform. In a blog post called "Launching The Largest Voting Information Effort in US History", the company wrote "people have told us they want the option to see fewer political ads on Facebook and Instagram. After announcing this feature earlier this year we are now making it available as part of our preparations for the 2020 US elections".

The "Voting Information Center", available on both Facebook and Instagram, will include, among other things, posts from verified local election authorities, guidance on registration and information on absentee ballots.