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T_i_B

(14,734 posts)
Tue May 23, 2017, 04:34 AM May 2017

Will "dark ads" on Facebook swing the 2017 general election?

This is something that is definitely an increasing trend. My Facebook feed is full of all sorts of creepy sponsored ads at the moment, and with the general election going on most of these are political. Political parties seem to think this is a more economical way of campaigning, although I personally still think that good old fashioned leaflets are the best way for political parties to get their message across.

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/june2017/2017/05/will-dark-ads-facebook-really-swing-2017-general-election

Since the inauguration of Donald Trump, it has been widely understood that Facebook swayed the outcome of both the United States presidential election and the EU Referendum. Micro-targeted advertising on the site – which is used by political parties to serve highly specific adverts to highly specific groups – has revolutionised politics as we know it.

During the 2015 election, the Conservatives spent £1.2m on Facebook advertising, and this year, Labour plan to spend almost the same. Like broadsheets, billboards, and broadcasts before them, Facebook adverts are a powerful tool for spreading a message to the masses. Unlike broadsheets, billboards, and broadcasts, however, Facebook advertising is at present almost entirely unregulated, leading to wide speculation about what exactly is going on.

Grand claims are surfacing about the power of the social network and what are now known as “dark ads”. “You can say to Facebook, I would like to make sure that I can micro-target that fisherman in certain parts of the UK so that they are specifically hearing that if you vote to leave that you will be able to change the way that the regulations are set for the fishing industry,” Gerry Gunster, a political campaigner at Leave.EU, told BBC Panorama on Monday night. The statement has now been extensively quoted in the media as proof of Facebook’s sinister micro-targeting and its role in securing Brexit.

It seem likely, however, that it is money – rather than pseudo-psychological profiles – that will ultimately affect the election's outcome. The party that pours the most money into Facebook will see the greatest results, simply because more money equals more people reached. In Philip Cowley and Dennis Kavanagh’s comprehensive book The British General Election of 2015, they reveal how budget differences meant Labour reached 16 million people on Facebook in their best month, compared to the Conservatives reaching 17 million each week. Ultimately, Knight-Webb hopes Who Targets Me will provide enough information to validate or debunk the widely-circulated claims about Facebook targeting. Until then, dark ads remain in the dark.

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Will "dark ads" on Facebook swing the 2017 general election? (Original Post) T_i_B May 2017 OP
Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc... cbreezen May 2017 #1

cbreezen

(694 posts)
1. Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc...
Tue May 23, 2017, 04:56 AM
May 2017

Just examples of how things that were designed to be used for good, can be co-opted and used for bad.

This was the same thinking that paved the way for a nuclear bomb.

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