Facebook to lift ban on political ads

Facebook will resume allowing political advertising on its platform starting Thursday, ending a freeze that was put in place around the general election.

“We put this temporary ban in place after the November 2020 election to avoid confusion or abuse following Election Day,” the company wrote in a blog post Wednesday.

Facebook had partially lifted the ban in December to allow advertising for the Georgia Senate run-off elections.

The decision to fully lift the ad ban comes the same day that the Democratic Party’s House and Senate campaign arms released a joint statement calling for it to be ended.

“This reckless and haphazard policy has made it harder for campaigns and organizations that do provide accurate information to voters and engage with them in good faith, and it hinders communities of color in particular from fully participating in the democratic process,” the executive directors of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee said. 

Google, which implemented a similar ban around the election, lifted a prohibition on political ads last week that it had placed after January’s deadly insurrection at the Capitol.