Srs Bsns: Facebook's New Ban On Political Ads Marks A Historic Change Of Heart For The Platform, But Many Remain Adamant That It Isn’t Enough
Rising in prevalence right alongside political memes, political advertisements on social media have become a massive point of contention in recent years. None other than social media giant Facebook, with its more than 223 million U.S. users, has been squarely in the spotlight of this heated debate … but that may be changing in the near future.
Back in early September, Facebook announced that it would place a ban on any new political ads before the week of November 3rd, just ahead of the election. Last week, the company then announced that it would be taking more preventative measures to keep candidates from using Facebook to manipulate the outcome of the election — which seems a bit odd when you dig into what exactly these new “measures” entail.
When the announcement hit the web last week, media outlets began reporting on the story in droves as “Facebook announces ban on all political ads.” The headlines resulted in a noteworthy reaction online, but one key thorn in the otherwise well-received news stemmed from the fact that yes, Facebook was banning political ads, but only after the 2020 presidential election. Additionally, the ban explicitly states that it is “temporary,” so whether or not they decide to flip down the line is anyone’s guess. Undeniably, political ads on social media are also a huge potential revenue stream that no business would want to lose out on — even when vocal opponents denounce them for it.
facebook: political ads are wrong and we’ll stop them indefinitely………after the electionpic.twitter.com/D6P4oHzKWT
— Jonathan Howard (@staringispolite) October 7, 2020
As noted by Facebook’s blog post, “We plan to temporarily stop running all social issue, electoral or political ads in the US after the polls close on November 3, to reduce opportunities for confusion or abuse.”
The move comes after Facebook has continually faced intense scrutiny over their reluctance to address issues with political ads, misinformation and voter manipulation that was widespread on the platform during the 2016 presidential election. Mark Zuckerberg himself has spent billions since then to hire employees to manage Facebook’s “integrity” and security in an attempt to stifle this problem.
Guy Rosen, VP for this new “integrity” division at Facebook, said in a call with reporters last week that the platform believes it has “done more than any other company over the past four years to help secure the integrity of elections.”
In addition to the public backlash, Twitter, Pinterest and TikTok have each banned political ads from their platforms recently, which has piled on the pressure for Facebook to follow suit. Even so, the company seems reluctant to do so.
About a year ago, Twitter’s announcement to ban all political ads was relatively unheard of, at least for major social media companies. At the time, CEO Jack Dorsey stated their reasoning for this move in a tweet. “We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought. A political message earns reach when people decide to follow an account or retweet. Paying for reach removes that decision, forcing highly optimized and targeted political messages on people. We believe this decision should not be compromised by money.”
We’ve made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally. We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought. Why? A few reasons…🧵
— jack (@jack) October 30, 2019
Twitter later stated that the ban was directly aimed at curbing such issues ahead of the 2020 election, and while this move was well-received, the fact that Facebook has decided to avoid a similar ban until after the election has had the opposite effect. After last week’s announcement, the news of Facebook’s political-ad ban has been heavily criticized for its decision to wait, especially considering how this election is perceived by many as one of the most important of all time.
This is certainly not the first time that Facebook has been challenged on their lackadaisical stance regarding political ads either. Last October, Elizabeth Warren famously purchased ads on the platform purposefully making false statements about Zuckerberg and his company’s decision to back the re-election of Trump, which had never once been made. The move was a sort of game for Warren, who hoped that it would provoke Facebook into action against misinformation.
On the topic of political ads on social media, how does the general public feel about all of this? According to a Pew Research study from September, approximately 54 percent of Americans say that social media companies shouldn’t allow any political ads whatsoever. Another 77 percent of participants also said that they felt it was “not very or not at all acceptable for these companies to use data about their users’ online activities to show them ads from political campaigns.”
The study goes on to report that the sentiments against political ads extend across most groups, including ages or political ideologies (though conservatives seem to lean more so in favor). Interestingly, this public aversion to political ads, especially the practice of microtargeting (a strategy for reaching specific groups based on location or interests), is nothing new. A 2018 survey from Pew found that 62 percent of social media users in the U.S. found it “unacceptable” for social media platforms to use their data to show messages from political campaigns.
Facebook: Yesterday rolls out new post-election day policies, including political ad banTwitter: Today, rolls out really thoughtful policy changes to introduce friction & nudge people towards thoughtful amplification post-electionYouTube: https://t.co/fB6lPNtZf5
— evelyn douek (@evelyndouek) October 10, 2020
With all this in mind, how effective all of these preventative measures from Facebook will even be is also unknown, but the last few months have seen troubling examples of groups using the site as a tool for disinformation and influence.
At the end of September, three Russian disinformation networks were taken down by Facebook, so the question of whether or not 2020’s election will face the same campaigns to influence voters we saw in 2016 is undeniable.
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