October 18, 2022 02:48 PM UTC

Ganahl Joins O'Dea Crying Conspiracy Over Operator Error

• 9 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

Just after we wrote earlier today about GOP U.S. Senate candidate Joe O’Dea’s new ad campaign on global tech giant Facebook complaining that his ads are being “censored” by global tech giant Google, 9NEWS’ Kyle Clark reports that the Republican candidate for governor of Colorado Hiedi Heidi Ganahl is making a similar claim of partisan censorship…about Facebook:

“We are being blocked by Facebook and Instagram,” Ganahl said. “We aren’t allowed to advertise like other campaigns are. It is literally happening right here in Colorado on our campaign.” [Pols emphasis]

Facebook’s publicly accessible library of paid political ads shows Ganahl’s campaign is advertising on Facebook, but at paltry levels compared to Democratic Governor Jared Polis…

“We followed Meta’s guidelines for ad placement and were repeatedly rejected,” said Ganahl spokeswoman Lexi Swearingen. “We also tried contacting Meta and were unsuccessful.”

Rather than taking the Ganahl campaign’s word, 9NEWS called up Facebook, which with anyone other than our grandparents we are supposed to start referring to as “Meta” but much like calling the Pepsi Center the Ball Arena, that still hasn’t stuck:

Meta, Facebook’s parent company, said the issue was a simple form that the Ganahl campaign had failed to complete. [Pols emphasis]

“In this case, additional ads were rejected because the advertiser had not successfully attached a paid-for-by disclaimer, which is required for all political ads in the US,” a Meta spokesperson said. “All the advertiser needs to do is link her disclaimer and submit the ads again.”

In short, the problem was not a conspiracy by the global tech conspiracy to prevent Heidi Ganahl from giving Facebook money for digital ads, something you might be surprised to discover they want to do and will gladly help you get done if you need help. Rather than obtain that freely available help, it looks like Ganahl’s campaign decided it would be a better idea to invent a conspiracy theory by Facebook against their campaign.

Assuming Joe O’Dea wants to know, we fully expect a similar explanation awaits him at Google.

The problem, we expect to discover as soon as these tech support excuses are exhausted, is that neither Ganahl nor O’Dea want this conspiracy theory debunked. They have both decided for their own reasons that convincing their supporters they are the victim of a massive conspiracy being perpetrated by tech giants against conservatives is the politically expedient thing to do.

This is what the end stage of a losing “post-truth” campaign looks like.

Flailing, unhinged desperation.