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Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., questions Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin during a Senate Banking Committee hearing in Dirksen Building titled Domestic and International Policy Update, on May 18, 2017.
Facebook removed some of Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign ads calling for its break up, but later reinstated them after Politico reported on the take down.
Medium post published Friday. Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, wrote that large companies with an annual global revenue of at least $25 billion should not be able to both own a public online marketplace or platform and sell on that platform themselves. She also promised to take steps to unwind what she called “anti-competitive mergers” including Facebook’s acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram.
“Three companies have vast power over our economy and our democracy. Facebook, Amazon, and Google,” Warren’s removed ads read, according to Politico. “We all use them. But in their rise to power, they’ve bulldozed competition, used our private information for profit, and tilted the playing field in their favor.”
When the ads were taken down, Facebook reportedly replaced them with a message that said, “This ad was taken down because it goes against Facebook’s advertising policies.”
A Facebook spokesperson later told Politico the ads were removed “because they violated our policies against use of our corporate logo,” but that they were in the process of being restored, “[i]n the interest of allowing robust debate.” Facebook did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Warren said in a tweet that Facebook’s initial removal of her ads showed the platform’s outsize power.
“Curious why I think FB has too much power?” she tweeted Monday. “Let’s start with their ability to shut down a debate over whether FB has too much power. Thanks for restoring my posts. But I want a social media marketplace that isn’t dominated by a single censor. #BreakUpBigTech.”
Watch: Government doesn’t have good track record on breaking up companies, says NYT’s Jim Stewart
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