Social Media’s Role in Policing Political Ads
by Hadia Faheem
In 2014, employees of the Internet Research Agency, a Russian propaganda firm, created online communities on Facebook and Instagram, where members could discuss polarizing issues, such as race, religion, or immigration. The issue was that these communities were solely made up of people with like-minded views. Russian propagandists effectively cut off Americans’ exposure to people with opposing viewpoints. In addition, they also began to buy and promote false, often inflammatory ads, and used targeted advertising to circulate them across social media to those who would be most likely to believe them.
Since it came to light that foreign powers were able to utilize social media channels to promote and exploit deeply-rooted divisions among the American electorate during the 2016 election, there has been mounting pressure on social media companies to take some form of action when it came to false political advertising. This past week, Twitter has agreed to do just that. Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey announced that starting November 22, 2019, Twitter would ban all forms of political advertising across the globe.
The decision puts him in direct contrast with Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. When it came to disseminating false information, Facebook was the favorite among Russian propagandists. The company reported that ads purchased by the Russian-backed Internet Research Agency has been viewed by approximately 150 million Americans, and that some Russian-created Facebook groups have amassed hundreds of thousands of members. Facebook’s reputation has taken a hit, and lawmakers have continuously pressed the company to do more.
Earlier this year, the company launched its Ad Library, in an attempt to increase transparency. The library allows users to view all active and inactive ads regardless of whether they are political or policy-based. In addition, the company is disclosing other pertinent information, such as who purchased the ad, impressions, and budget, in addition to including a “Paid For By” label right on the face of the ad when it appears in users’ news feeds. Advertisers will also be required to verify their identity and location to prevent individuals outside of a country from posting political ads about a country that is not their own.
The idea behind the Ad Library is that Facebook cannot effectively police ads placed on their platform, so the Ad Library provides information to watchdogs and other fact-checking third parties so that they can also report misconduct. Many, like New York Congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez argue that if a tech company feels it cannot effectively police false political advertising, then it should just ban it altogether. However, instead of following Jack Dorsey’s lead and banning political ads from the platform, Zuckerberg has dug his heels in even further and stated that he does not believe it is Facebook’s role to police political ads.
Zuckerberg argues that it is not a private company’s place to censor politicians, regardless of whether what they are saying is fact or fiction. Critics have accused him of solely considering his financial bottom line when he came to this decision, which he refutes. To him, profits have nothing to do with his decision; Zuckerberg states that political ad revenue equaled less than 0.5% of the company’s projected annual revenue for the next fiscal year.
The renewed scrutiny over Facebook’s policies in the past few weeks comes on the heels of an ad run by President Trump’s re-election campaign. The ad in question claims that Biden promised to pay Ukraine $1 billion if the company fired the prosecutor investigating allegations of corruption against a company that his son, Hunter, was on the board of.
The ad was run on Facebook and Youtube — owned by Google. However, in response to a letter from former Vice President Biden asking the platforms to remove the ad, both companies claimed that it did not violate their policies. In its response letter to Biden, Facebook stated that direct speech from politicians is not liable to fact-checking, and that it is up to the voters themselves to scrutinize and be skeptical of what they hear from politicians.
While Facebook has been fielding condemnation from both lawmakers and advocacy groups alike, Google has largely been able to evade a majority of the criticism, despite the fact that both companies have similar policies when it comes to political advertisements. Like Facebook, advertisers on Google are required to disclose identity, location, and who paid for the ads, but Google has refused to take a clear stance on the accuracy of political ads the way Facebook and Twitter have.
In American politics, there is a long history of candidates broadcasting falsehood about and attacking one another, be it through direct speech, TV, or radio. Social media, however, has fundamentally changed the way the game is played. These same lies are now capable of directly reaching millions of people across the world in a matter of minutes.
Until lawmakers and tech companies can find a way to compromise and tackle this problem as a team instead of accusing one another of not doing enough, it is unlikely that anything will end up being done to solve a problem that will only continue to grow worse overtime.
