Florida Gov. DeSantis orders investigation into Facebook election influence – By Jeffrey Schweers (USA Today) / Sept 27 2021
‘Facebook has violated Florida law to put its thumb on the scale of numerous state and local races,’ DeSantis said
Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday asked his appointed Secretary of State Laurel Lee — the state’s chief elections officer — to investigate whether Facebook influenced state and local elections in Florida.
The announcement comes just two weeks after the Wall Street Journal published an exposé, which DeSantis cited as a reason for calling the investigation, on the social media giant’s creation of an elite list of users exempt from its rules.
Most of the Journal’s story describes a review of internal documents showing how celebrities, politicians and other A-listers were allowed to post harassing comments, calls to violence and fake news without consequences.
But only two references are made to elections in the article, and that was how Facebook tended to favor comments by incumbents over challengers in state and local races. It offers no evidence of wrongdoing in recent Florida elections.
