Twitter has ended political ads on their site, while Facebook denies that they should fact check political ads. Let the voters see the ads and decide for themselves, they say.
I understand Facebook's unease with being the fact checker in this day and age, where a large number of the voters reject any fact checking that contradicts their preferred belief. On the other hand, as an article on WaPo suggests (by Weintraub, head of the FEC), the problem is that these ads are microtargeted, so that independent sources cannot fact check and so that users have no idea whether their candidate is telling another group of users something completely different than what they're being told. Back before such targeted advertising, candidates' messages were more transparent (though I suppose that they could mail different messages to different areas, this was at least a smaller issue).
Weintraub's solution is to ban microtargeting for political ads. Ads could be restricted to broad geographic areas, counties, say, but not to groups defined by any other data (such as political affiliation, income, sports team preferences, etc.). I think that's a pretty reasonable idea, though it would certainly make even legitimate advertising less effective (non-micro-targeted advertising would presumably be much less expensive, so the burden wouldn't be so onerous for the campaigns).
Another option I think is reasonable is this: allow the campaigns to use micro-targeting, but require that each and every political ad be publicly available at the same time. There would be a page on Facebook showing every political ad pushed to any user on Facebook. This would probably be a bit less effective in deterring misleading advertising than Weintraub's proposal, since those who fall for misleading advertising are unlikely to see such a page or read about controversies involving their candidates, but it would add some transparency while still leaving the benefits of targeted advertising.
I suppose it's not clear to me which ads count as political ads, but I presume that there is some sort of standard for that determination. You'd like it to include ads from pacs not officially associated with a campaign, of course.
These are just my half-thoughts on the issue. I don't know much about targeted ads, so comments welcome.
I understand Facebook's unease with being the fact checker in this day and age, where a large number of the voters reject any fact checking that contradicts their preferred belief. On the other hand, as an article on WaPo suggests (by Weintraub, head of the FEC), the problem is that these ads are microtargeted, so that independent sources cannot fact check and so that users have no idea whether their candidate is telling another group of users something completely different than what they're being told. Back before such targeted advertising, candidates' messages were more transparent (though I suppose that they could mail different messages to different areas, this was at least a smaller issue).
Weintraub's solution is to ban microtargeting for political ads. Ads could be restricted to broad geographic areas, counties, say, but not to groups defined by any other data (such as political affiliation, income, sports team preferences, etc.). I think that's a pretty reasonable idea, though it would certainly make even legitimate advertising less effective (non-micro-targeted advertising would presumably be much less expensive, so the burden wouldn't be so onerous for the campaigns).
Another option I think is reasonable is this: allow the campaigns to use micro-targeting, but require that each and every political ad be publicly available at the same time. There would be a page on Facebook showing every political ad pushed to any user on Facebook. This would probably be a bit less effective in deterring misleading advertising than Weintraub's proposal, since those who fall for misleading advertising are unlikely to see such a page or read about controversies involving their candidates, but it would add some transparency while still leaving the benefits of targeted advertising.
I suppose it's not clear to me which ads count as political ads, but I presume that there is some sort of standard for that determination. You'd like it to include ads from pacs not officially associated with a campaign, of course.
These are just my half-thoughts on the issue. I don't know much about targeted ads, so comments welcome.
via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/2PQyHdh
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire