they also know it sounds like it could,” Davis,
who has endorsed Democratic presidential
candidate Joe Biden, said of the ad.
After Bloomberg’s widely panned first debate
appearance last week, the campaign posted
an edited video clip that made it appear as if
his opponents stood in awkward silence for 20
seconds, as crickets chirped in the background,
when Bloomberg asked who else on stage had
ever started a business.
Bloomberg’s campaign insists the video was
“tongue-in-cheek.”
Facebook said the video did not violate any of its
policies. Twitter, however, said such a campaign
video would be labeled as manipulated once a
new policy takes effect March 5.
That altered video could be the beginning of
a “slippery slope,” warned Tara McGowan, the
co-founder of Acronym. Her group has pledged
to spend $74 million in digital advertising to
keep Democrats in the spotlight this year and
compete with Trump’s digital presence.
“I hope they don’t cross that line again, but
he really doesn’t have anything to lose,”
McGowan said.
The campaign reeled it in Monday after
blowback from a series of tweets that included
fake quotes from Sanders praising authoritarian
leaders like North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and
Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
Critics called the tweets disinformation. A
Bloomberg spokeswoman said the tweets
were a joke but acknowledged the campaign
is considering labeling future posts as satire to
avoid accusations of spreading misinformation.