Reddit's Policy Update To Promote Political Ad Transparency Sparks Online Debate And Reveals Some Humorous Targeting

On Monday, Reddit released an announcement that its “Reddit Advertising Platform” would be updated to add more transparency to political advertisements. At the same time, Reddit launched r/RedditPoliticalAds, a new subreddit dedicated to providing information on such advertisements. The datasets provided by the platform were mostly drab, but there were some humorous insights buried in the information, such as Bernie Sanders’ campaign purchasing ads on the r/kossacks_for_sanders sub.

In the blog post, the company stated that all political ad campaigns from January 2019 to present-day and onwards would be listed and available for Redditors to access. Anyone who wishes to see the exact amount of money spent, where it was targeted and how many impressions it received can now do so by visiting r/RedditPoliticalAds.

Comments on these ads will also be required for at least 24 hours, in a move that Reddit hopes will promote discussion between users and advertisers. “We will strongly encourage political advertisers to use this opportunity to engage directly with users in the comments,” they said. While that may sound promising, they also mentioned that advertisers can moderate comments and even remove the ones they dislike.

In the announcement post, numerous Redditors also voiced opposition to the platform allowing political advertisements altogether. One such comment, posted by Redditor SaintPoost, received over 400 upvotes, stating, “Maybe not being a propaganda machine this year, or any other year, would be great. Ban all ads. The only reason you allow the ads is for the money they hand your business, and don't pretend it's because you want people to be more informed or anything like that. You know how many people reddit has hurt? All the witch hunts, the bots and troll farms, the deception and lies spread on a daily basis regarding not only politics, but any other concept under the sun? There's no transparency in any of the ads or the biproduct of the ads, it just hurts someone and makes someone else out to look better. It devolves into mudslinging every year, and the comments all get locked in the end anyway, every account becomes (deleted) and every comment [removed]. There's hardly ever conversation, and the people that want to engage in actual political discourse will not be using the ads to do so. It's high time you just forego the money and just blanket ban all political ads.”

The update follows in the footsteps of several other platforms ahead of the 2020 U.S. presidential election. In October 2019, Twitter announced a total ban on political ads altogether, stating that “political message reach should be earned, not bought.” Twitch, LinkedIn and Pinterest have also placed comprehensive bans on political ads.

On the flip side, Facebook chose to go the opposite route, doubling down on continuing to allow such ads, and merely provided ways for users to control what kinds of ads they see through settings. After Bloomberg’s campaign launched a sponsored advertising push using meme pages in February 2020, Instagram also updated its policies, requiring political ads to be specially marked as such.

Since the rollout of Reddit’s new policy, some around the web have begun digging into the datasets to see what advertisers have been up to, and a few of these insights have been pretty entertaining.

Lachlan Markay, a reporter at The Daily Beast, announced some of his discoveries on Twitter, noting Planned Parenthood specifically excluded the r/NASCAR subreddit from its targeting profile, and that the Sanders’ campaign purchased ads on the r/kossacks_for_sanders sub.

lmao the Sanders campaign bought ads on r/kossacks_for_sanders pic.twitter.com/6fA6y61dcZ

— Lachlan Markay (@lachlan) April 14, 2020

In another ad from the “Faith and Power PAC,” they opted to negatively target subreddits such as r/hunting, r/deerhunting and r/bowhunting, while focusing on others like r/peta and r/hillaryclinton.

To see the full breakdown of the political ads policy update, check out the excerpt below from the post on Reddit:

All political advertisements must be manually approved by Reddit. In order to be approved, the advertiser must be actively working with a Reddit Sales Representative (for more information on the managed sales process, please see “Advertising at Scale” here.) Political advertisers will also be asked to present additional information to verify their identity and/or authorization to place such advertisements.

Political advertisements on Reddit include, but are not limited to, the following:
* Ads related to campaigns or elections, or that solicit political donations
* Ads that promote voting or voter registration (discouraging voting or voter registration is not allowed)
* Ads promoting political merchandise (for example, products featuring a public office holder or candidate, political slogans, etc)
* Issue ads or advocacy ads pertaining to topics of potential legislative or political importance or placed by political organizations

Advertisements in this category must include clear "paid for by" disclosures within the ad copy and/or creative, and must comply with all applicable laws and regulations, including those promulgated by the Federal Elections Commission. All political advertisements must also have comments enabled for at least the first 24 hours of the ad run. The advertiser is strongly encouraged to engage with Reddit users directly in these comments. The advertisement and any comments must still adhere to Reddit’s Content Policy.

Please note additionally that information regarding political ad campaigns and their purchasing individuals or entities may be publicly disclosed by Reddit for transparency purposes.

Finally, Reddit only accepts political advertisements within the United States, at the federal level. Political advertisements at the state and local level, or outside of the United States are not allowed.