Facebook just reopened Pandora's Box on voter suppression and misinformation, giving Trump the green light to spread lies, hate and election misinformation on their platform. Under Facebook's extraordinarily reckless new policy, politicians' posts and advertisements are exempt from the platform’s rules.

By creating the “Trump Exemption”, Facebook is giving politicians free reign to undermine our elections, push conspiracy theories and promote white nationalist propaganda without any checks from Facebook. What's more, Facebook will be profiting from this hate and misinformation. Trump is already exploiting this dangerous exemption by running more than $1 million of Facebook ads a week; pushing conspiracy theories to deflect from his impeachment inquiry and misinform voters.

Facebook continues to pretend they are neutral but in the moral arc of history they will be considered critically responsible for the normalization of a type of politics that is harmful to Black people. Facebook is increasingly giving into to external and internal right-wing pressure. While Trump continues to expand his misinformation machine, Mark Zuckerberg has been sitting down to dinner with far-right conspiracy and hate peddlers like Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro. And Facebook executives like Vice President Nick Clegg continue to allow the company's powerful right-wing staff - like their public policy head, Joel Kaplan, and head of global elections, Katie Harbath - to make the company's policies increasingly friendly toward Trump. This lax attitude toward blatant misinformation and willingness to appease Trump is a threat to our democracy and election security.

With the 2020 election already underway, there is no room for politicians to be allowed to push misinformation and voter suppression on the world’s largest social media platform. The 2016 election proved that Facebook is an extremely powerful platform for disseminating manipulative misinformation. What's more, just last week, the Republican controlled Senate Intelligence Committee confirmed that the 2016 misinformation warfare conducted on Facebook targeted no group more than Black people.

The stakes are too high for this policy to stand. Facebook must drop the Trump exemption and ensure that all politicians follow the same rules on content and advertisements as every other user. Politicians cannot have immunity to lie and misinform the public. Facebook must correct this policy now.