The Biden campaign asked Google and Twitter to take down Trump's misleading campaign ad, in addition to asking Facebook, and both companies refused the request
Elizabeth Culliford / Reuters : See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
The Biden campaign's takedown push began with Facebook refusing its request to pull the misleading Trump ad CNN had rejected, a decision that reignited the debate over whether platforms should fact-check paid political speech. This story extends that arc: Google and Twitter have now both declined the same request, meaning every major platform the campaign petitioned has said no.
The refusals sit alongside an inconsistency in platform enforcement — Facebook says politicians may lie in ads yet has banned 160+ ads from Trump, Biden, Warren, Sanders and Steyer in October alone for profanity and fake buttons — which is exactly the tension the Biden campaign is trying to force into the open.
First-order effects
- The Biden campaign's removal strategy fails completely: with Google and Twitter joining Facebook's earlier refusal, all three targeted platforms keep running the Trump ad, leaving the campaign with no distribution-level remedy.
Second-order effects
- The pattern hardens rather than reverses — weeks later YouTube runs the same ad accusing Biden of corruption, seen 10M-30M times, while Google insists it strives to keep ads 'honest', showing the refusal was policy, not an oversight.
Third-order effects
- With takedown requests exhausted, campaigns pivot from petitioning platforms to attacking them in paid media itself — by mid-2020 Trump is running Facebook ads accusing Twitter and Snapchat of election interference while Biden's ads call Facebook a threat to democracy, making the platforms the message.
The trend: Major platforms are converging on a hands-off stance toward paid political speech — refusing campaign takedown requests even as they enforce stricter rules on ordinary advertisers.