San Francisco man launches gubernatorial candidacy to run false ads on Facebook about President Trump

Bay Area activist Adriel Hampton announced Monday he will run for California governor to draw attention to what he believes are pitfalls of Facebook’s standards for political advertising by running deliberately false advertisements.

OK. Just got off the phone with my strategy team. I am running for Governor of California on a platform of regulating social media. If you want to volunteer with media or platform, email adriel@adrielhampton.com. I am completing my form 501 today and will submit it in Sacramento.

— Adriel Hampton, #CAGov candidate (@adrielhampton) October 28, 2019

The social media platform has come under fire for running ads by politicians and candidates without fact-checking them, refusing requests by former Vice President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign to remove ads featuring false claims about his connections to Ukraine.

{mosads}Last week, the “Really Online Lefty League,” a political action committee for which Hampton serves as treasurer, began running an ad on Facebook that splices together audio of Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) saying “Simply put, we believe in the Green New Deal.”

The ad was inspired by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-N.Y.) questioning of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in which the social media magnate said he did not know whether a political ad would be permitted to run falsely claiming a candidate supported her signature proposal.

“I think we have some pretty serious issues of corporations now basically running society and I think Facebook is the grossest example of that, because it covers our corporations, our entertainment and our media,” Hampton told The Hill.

Zuckerberg is not his only target as a candidate, however; Hampton told The Hill he’s also seeking to draw attention to what he says is misconduct by Pacific Gas & Electric, which has been sharply criticized for its handling of mandatory power shutoffs in the state amid a series of fires, saying Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has been “the beneficiary of PG&E largesse for 20 years.”

“If you can run a campaign that’s against Donald Trump, against Mark Zuckerberg, against PG&E, against Gavin Newsom, it’s a pretty damn good way to kick off a campaign for governor, and I think it’s a good way to keep these issues in the spotlight,” Hampton said. “I have kids and I f—ing freak out about what’s going on in our society. and I think this is something I can do to fight back.”