Facebook can influence how we vote
Writing in British daily The Guardian, technology analyst John Naughton asks the following question about this year’s upcoming UK polls: could Facebook be a factor in the next elections?
The answer of course is yes, and given that we’re talking about a US company with an 80 percent penetration rate in some markets and that has made clear its willingness to manipulate the states of mind of its users, that is a cause for concern.
In fact, this hypothesis has already proved by the magazine Nature: the social network was able to promote a greater degree of participation in politics in a joint objective carried out by some 61 million Americans.
This shouldn’t really surprise us; after all, we have long become accustomed to the mass media exercising considerable influence over the political agenda. Anybody who runs a newspaper, radio station or television channel is obviously able to not only generate income from their activity (at least in theory), but is also able to orient the information it generates through what has become known as its editorial line, in other words the way it interprets and chooses the news it reports.
In fact, we choose our newspapers, radio, or television channels on the basis of their editorial line, something that is enshrined in the First Amendment of the US Constitution. Google recently won an important judicial victory when it persuaded a judge to recognize its right to manipulate the results of a search in the same way that a publication might slant its reporting.
Beyond the question of social networks or search engines manipulating their users’ voting intentions by the way they report things is that of why they would do so: we are talking here about purely commercial entities here, dedicated exclusively to exposing their users to content provided by advertisers. In the case of Google, advertisers want people who are looking for a specific product or service and who meet certain characteristics to see their message. So we’re not talking about something that might happen, but something that is an essential part of their reason for existing: it’s what they do.
Could a social network or search engine expose or hide certain content and thus influence its users’ voting intentions? Isn’t this what the media has always done anyway? There is no end of politicians who have won elections or carried out policies with the help of the mass media, or who have failed to do so because the media was not on their side.
If a television channel or media group can influence the way people vote, then think what a platform that many consider neutral would be able to do along the lines of: “it gives me the results of my search”, or “it has shown me what my friends have done”, except with a far greater reach than traditional media? After all, aren’t some political parties trying to use the social networks right now to deflect criticism or to make people think about them in a certain way?
In short, of course the social networks can influence our voting intentions: they occupy a growing amount of our time, and what we seen on them affects us in one way or another. All they have to do is to slant what they report in one direction, whether consciously or otherwise, and we could find ourselves talking about “adjusting” the electoral map in one direction or another. At the same time, our environment, our friends, and what these networks publish about politics will also influence us. Similarly, exposure to this content can be slanted by the platform. And if this is done carefully, there is no reason why we necessarily even notice it was happening.
If you hadn’t thought about this until now, then get thinking. Have a look at the conversations, the articles, the news on the social networks that could influence how you vote; doing so is not a sign of some paranoiac complex that you believe you’re at risk of being brainwashed, it’s simply a good idea to be aware that the possibility certainly exists and is technically possible. You never know what might happen…
(En español, aquí)
