The companies’ advertising teams competed with each other for millions of ad dollars from Secure America Now, an advocacy group whose advertising campaign included anti-Clinton and anti-Islam messages, Bloomberg reported.
According to Business Insider, the ads violated the norms of of political advertising that the traditional media needs to follow. The case also undermines the companies’ frequent claim that their algorithms are to blame for any issues that happened during the US elections.
As TechCrunch noted, the case is a “textbook illustration” of how Facebook’s and Google’s apparent commitment to progressive values comes to conflict with their dedication to free speech.