Unpopular decisions

I will please no one with this post about Facebook’s and Twitter’s decisions regarding political advertising and news.

The popular opinion would be to praise Twitter for banning political and issue ads and condemn Facebook for not fact-checking political ads. I’ll do neither. I disagree with both companies, for I think they each found diametrically opposed ways to take too little responsibility for what occurs on their platforms.

First Twitter. A week ago, I disagreed on Twitter with someone who said Facebook should ban political ads. Then a few Twitter folks asked me — on Twitter, of course — why I said that. I explained my perspective, but clearly was not persuasive.

My view: if we cut off inexpensive and efficiently targeted political — and, as it turns out, issue — advertising, then we likely will be left with big-money campaigns still using mass media (that is, TV) just as we had hoped to leave that corrupt era behind. I fear that such a move will benefit incumbents — who have money, recognition, and power — at the cost of insurgents. Without advertising on social media would we have the next @AOC? Yes, I know that Ocasio-Cortez herself is endorsing Twitter’s decision but as The Intercept’s Ryan Grim points out in a thoughtful thread, even she spends money on social-media advertising. If new movements are cut off from using social advertising, Grim argues, it could be “a huge blow to progressives, and a boon to big-money candidates.”