biden campaign to pressure facebook to strengthen rules against misinformation the campaign will urge its supporters to push the social media giant to strengthen its rules against misinformation and harmful commentscreditmark makela for the new york timesjune 11 2020washington the biden presidential campaign emboldened by a recent surge in support is going after a new target facebookafter months of privately battling the tech giant over president trumps free rein on its social network the campaign will begin urging its millions of supporters to demand that facebook strengthen its rules against misinformation and to hold politicians accountable for harmful commentson thursday the campaign will circulate a petition and an open letter to mark zuckerberg facebooks chief executive to change the companys handsoff approach to political speech the petition will be sent to millions of supporters on its email and text message lists and through social media including facebook imploring them to sign the letter the campaign will also release a video this week to be shared across social media to explain the issuereal changes to facebooks policies for their platform and how they enforce them are necessary to protect against a repeat of the role that disinformation played in the 2016 election and that continues to threaten our democracy today said bill russo a spokesman for the biden campaignthe move puts the biden camp in the center of a raging debate about the role and responsibility of tech platforms civil rights leaders democratic lawmakers and many of facebooks own employees say that big tech companies have a responsibility to prevent false and hateful information from being shared widelybut conservatives including mr trump accuse social media companies that have tightened their speech policies like twitter and snap of political bias two weeks ago after twitter attached factchecking notices to two of the presidents tweets that made false claims about voter fraud mr trump signed an executive order that would make it easier for federal regulators to argue that the companies are suppressing free speechthe biden teams offensive also intensifies pressure on facebook which faced a public backlash last week after it did nothing about inflammatory posts by mr trump employees resigned hundreds participated in a virtual walkout advertisers canceled their accounts and nonprofits in washington ceased sponsorships from the companythe criticism poses one of most serious challenges to the leadership of mr zuckerberg since he helped start the company 15 years ago but faced with opposition in the past the 36yearolds instinct has been to dig in his heels mr zuckerberg feels strongly that his platform should be neutral and believes the debate on speech is about preserving a diversity of ideas even if those ideas are false or harmfulimagecreditpete marovich for the new york timeswe live in a democracy where the elected officials decide the rules around campaigns andy stone a spokesman for facebook said on thursday two weeks ago the president of the united states issued an executive order directing federal agencies to prevent social media sites from engaging in