The Committee to Defend the President, a pro-Trump super PAC, will not be able to advertise on Facebook again anytime soon, the social media giant announced Thursday.
Facebook indicated the Committee to Defend the President continuously shared misinformation.
“As a result of the Committee to Defend the President’s repeated sharing of content determined by third-party fact-checkers to be false, they will not be permitted to advertise for a period of time on our platform,” Andy Stone, Facebook spokesperson, said.
Facebook did not reveal how long the ban on the group’s ads would last.
The Committee to Defend the President has close to one million Facebook followers. Since 2018, the group has invested more than $300,000 in Facebook ads.
The group has received harsh criticism from Democrats in the past.
The law office representing Former President Barack Obama sent a cease-and-desist letter in February to the group after they created an ad using his statements to suggest presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden supports “plantation politics.”
“This unauthorized use of President Obama’s name, image, likeness, voice and book passage is clearly intended to mislead the target audience of the ad into believing that the passage from the audiobook is a statement that was made by President Barack Obama during his presidency, when it was in fact made by a barber in a completely different context more than 20 years ago,” the letter said.
It added, “To this end, the Committee to Defend the President must immediately remove this ad … further the Committee to Defend the President must agree on behalf of itself and all affiliated entities to refrain from future misuse of President Obama’s intellectual property or right of publicity.”
In 2019, Biden campaign manager Greg Schultz sent a letter to Facebook demanding the platform reject an ad produced by the Committee to Defend the President.
Schultz slammed Facebook for a “deeply flawed” policy. He claimed it gives “blanket permission” for any candidate to use the platform to “mislead” voters.