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Facebook to Provide Less On-Site Support for Trump in 2020 Election - Reports

Facebook officials said that for future campaigns it would reduce the amount of on-site support it was asked to testify about during the Senate hearings.
Sputnik

The company will offer technical support and basic training to candidate campaigns and political advocacy organizations yet it will not offer the same strategic support to Donald Trump as during 2016 presidential elections, Bloomberg reported.

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Facebook said it would focus on providing information to all elected officials and political campaigners through its political campaign website, provide the information how to use Facebook products and assist navigating the ad authorization process so candidates could use the website more broadly.

Facebook was accused of giving more support to Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign and urged to testify before Congress after Brad Parscale, the digital media director for Trump’s 2020 election campaign, told CBS News’ “60 minutes” that he was able to get pro-Trump “embeds” from the company to help him on strategy, which was later revealed to be the part of the technical support team providing guidance on how to best use the company’s services.

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Facebook told Congress that the company offered “identical support” to both campaigns, also disputing the use of the word “embed” used to describe the relationship. An internal company analysis, obtained by Bloomberg, also showed a memo from a Facebook data scientist explaining that Trump’s way of handling the campaign was  “more complex than Clinton’s and better leveraged Facebook’s ability to optimize for outcomes.”

The report also showed that Trump purchased more ads than Clinton — $44 million in ad purchases against $28 million. These numbers also meant that 84% of Trump’s campaign budget asked people on Facebook to take an action, like donating, compared with 56% of Clinton’s.

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