Facebook Says Technical Glitches Improperly Blocked Campaign Ads

(Bloomberg) -- Facebook Inc. revealed Thursday how internal technical glitches had disrupted the delivery of some ads from the Joe Biden and Donald Trump campaigns, but said it made changes to resolve those hiccups in the run-up to the November U.S. presidential election.

The social media giant’s admission followed complaints from the Biden camp about how thousands of its ads had been blocked. Facebook said in a blog post it spotted “unanticipated issues” affecting both campaigns, including technical flaws that caused a number of ads to be “paused improperly.”

“No ad was paused or rejected by a person, or because of any partisan consideration,” Facebook said in its post. “The technical problems were automated and impacted ads from across the political spectrum and both Presidential campaigns.”

Facebook issued a rule for this election season to prevent new ads from entering the system in the week before the vote, to make it easier to address problems with misinformation, such as candidates announcing victory prematurely. But political ads were supposed to be allowed if they were in by the deadline.

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