AOC’s $11 million in Facebook ads is a lot of political cancer

U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D – NY), usually just known by her initials AOC, has been a harsh critic of Facebook since she took office in 2019, going so far as to call Facebook’s parent company, Meta, “a cancer to democracy.” 

Yet despite her mountains of criticism against Facebook, her campaign on Saturday surpassed the $11 million dollar mark in advertising on the platform since 2018.

That’s a lot of cancer.

That’s a lot especially when compared to other political committees. The chart below shows the amount that other campaigns have spent on Facebook advertising for the same time period. (Numbers are rounded)

AOC has almost spent as much money on Facebook advertising her own campaign than both the Democratic and Republican Congressional committees combined

The Congresswoman closed her personal Facebook account several months after being sworn in, calling it a public health risk.

Two years later when Facebook rebranded, she posted on X that Meta is “a cancer to democracy.”

Despite her harsh criticisms of Facebook/Meta, AOC continues to use the platform for political purposes and has 1.8 million followers.

AOC has consistently attacked Facebook/Meta. Shortly after taking office in 2019, she grilled Zuckerberg during a hearing and claimed that the platform not only spread misinformation, but facilitated it.

Three years later, AOC, one of the most progressive democratic representatives, found common ground with Republican Representative Matt Gaetz on the topic of breaking up Facebook. As noted above, Gaetz has only spent  $448,000 in advertising on the platform.

In an interview with Yahoo Finance’s Andy Serwer, she said, “Facebook should be broken up. You should pursue antitrust activity on Facebook. And there are so many different reasons why. They are acting as an advertiser. They’re acting as both platform and vendor. They are a communications platform, which has historically been a well-established domain of antitrust.”

AOC has also said Facebook is a threat to democracy.

Why would someone who despises a platform so much spend more than anyone else? Why would she spend such large sums to support a “cancer to democracy”?

To anyone who closely follows politics — and especially political campaigns — it’s clear she’s building the base for some kind of larger political run in the future. And from the numbers we see, president must be the office she’s thinking about.

For example, Adam Schiff, a long-serving California member of the House of Representatives is in the last weeks of his run for U.S. Senate, which, now that he has won the Democratic primary in that blue state, he will certainly go on to win the November general election. Yet compare Schiff’s Facebook spending to AOC — his $6.6 million to her $11 million. And, it should be pointed out, Schiff obviously spent a lot because he is actually in a Senate campaign!

Hypocrisy from politicians has become so commonplace we hardly even notice some examples of them any more. Some of those hypocrisies are shallow, not rooted in any deep principle, and represent just a small turning of opinion from one day to the next.

Other hypocrisies, however, are deep, long-running, and systemic, and reveal something meaningful about the person.

When that day comes when AOC stands in front of the Bronx bar she formerly worked at to announce her run for the nation’s highest office, it should not be lost on the public that she built a massive network of small-money donors and activists, but that she was mainly able to do that through a company she says is a “cancer” to our political way of life.

She either wants power so badly she’s willing to feed a “cancer” to get there, or…she doesn’t really believe the thing is a cancer.

Neither AOC nor her campaign returned a request for comment.

Beth Ann Rosica resides in West Chester, has a Ph.D. in Education, and has dedicated her career to advocating on behalf of at-risk children and families. She covers education issues for Broad + Liberty. Contact her at barosica@broadandliberty.com.

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