© Leah Millis / Reuters
Presidential candidates in 2020 won't be able to rely on 'embedded' Facebook staff, the Menlo Park company declared. Hillary Clinton's campaign declined this help in 2016, letting her rival Donald Trump leverage it to victory.
Facebook will still offer technical support to candidate headquarters, as well as basic training on how to use the platform, but will not have any staffers "embedded" in campaigns as it did in 2016, Bloomberg
reported.
This kind of support helped then-candidate Trump spread his message in 2016, his digital director Brad Parscale said in an interview, referring to Facebook staff as "embeds." Facebook has quibbled with his choice of words and eventually decided to scrap the program, under tremendous pressure from Congress to "do something" about its influence over US elections.
Clinton's surprise defeat led to accusations of "Russian collusion" and "meddling" in social media, with numerous news outfits leading the witch hunt for "Russian bots and trolls" on Facebook and Twitter. After CEO Mark Zuckerberg was grilled by Congress in April, Facebook said in its follow-up
response that it offered the same support to the Clinton camp as it did to Trump, but that the Democrats declined.
Comment: Serbia know it has a staunch ally in Russia. It was the only voice of support as NATO illegally decimated the country.