By: Hart Parris
With the recent news that Twitter will be no longer selling political ads, the question arises, “What will the rest of social media do and is curtailing political ads really the answer to the almost complete exchange of ideas and the widespread glut of disinformation campaigns we are burdened with daily?”
Perhaps limiting the information that reaches us is not the biggest concern. Perhaps it is the undeniable fact and depending on where you get your news directly impacts how you view today’ political climate. There is no denying that we have segments of society in this country that simply do not hear what another segment hears. Which news outlet you watch; CNN, FOX or MSNBC determines how you view the upcoming election.
Worse still is that, social media uses our online searches to funnel information to us based on the views each of those outlets present the news. Its called microtargeting and here is what Ellen Weintraub, chairperson of the Federal Election Commission sees this tool of online communicators to reach a specific audience as extremely dangerous.
Twitter’s surprise announcement on Wednesday that it would stop selling political advertising is an inflection point in paid political ads on the Internet. Twitter has made its move; pressure will build for the other Internet giants, particularly Facebook, to respond.
Here’s a move that would allow political ads while deterring disinformation campaigns, restoring transparency and protecting the robust marketplace of ideas: Sell political ads, but stop the practice of microtargeting those ads.
“Microtargeting” is the sales practice of limiting the scope of an ad’s distribution to precise sets of people, such as single men between 25 and 35 who live in apartments and “like” the Washington Nationals. But just because microtargeted ads can be a good way to sell deodorant does not make them a safe way to sell candidates. It is easy to single out susceptible groups and direct political misinformation to them with little accountability, because the public at large never sees the ad.
Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey diagnosed the problem exactly right: “Internet political ads present entirely new challenges to civic discourse: machine learning-based optimization of messaging and micro-targeting, unchecked misleading information, and deep fakes,” he tweeted. “All at increasing velocity, sophistication, and overwhelming scale.”
But Dorsey’s prescription — killing off political ads altogether — isn’t the only way to address the problem. One of the primary ailments of the current online political advertising system is the way Internet platforms sell their ads. Microtargeting by foreign and domestic actors in 2016 proved to be a potent weapon for spreading disinformation and sowing discord. There is no reason to think it will not be wielded even more effectively going forward. The microtargeting of political ads may be undermining the united character of our United States.
Such ads also undermine the main remedy that the Supreme Court has set out for lies in politics: counter speech. Counter speech is most possible where a broad public can hear the speech and respond.
Eliminating political ad microtargeting would address a healthy share of the worst problems we see in online political advertising. It would:
• Enhance transparency and accountability. Ads that are more widely available will contribute to the robust and wide-open debate that is central to our First Amendment values. Political advertisers will have greater incentives to be truthful in ads when they can more easily and publicly be called to account for them. And ad-targeting disclosures would be much more straightforward and helpful than they are now.
• Deter and flush out disinformation. Malicious advertisers, foreign and domestic, would be less likely to say to an entire state what they have been willing to say to a small audience targeted for its susceptibility.
• Unite us. Political advertisers, who would have to appeal to a wider audience, would have incentive to avoid fueling the divisiveness that pulls us apart.
It would be unwise, unnecessary and counterproductive for political speech to be shut out of the Internet advertising market altogether. The overall advertising market has moved decisively toward the Internet. Political advertising on the Internet is an important part of our political discourse — perhaps the most important. Perhaps the answer is more political speech, not less.
In the decades before Facebook began to sell targeted ads in 2007, plenty of campaigns were well-fought. Political actors who wished to communicate with voters individually or in a highly targeted fashion could still do so using their own email, telephone and address lists. Similarly, anything political actors posted on their own pages would still reach their followers. Moving the Internet advertising market for political ads closer to a broadcast model would not eliminate all problems in Internet political advertising, but it would knock out some of those that most threaten the integrity of our discourse. At the very least there would be more of an opportunity for the general public to be discussing the same information.
When candidates — or anyone else — try to influence voters, they should be willing to let a wide range of voters hear what they have to say, instead of a precision-targeted few. To do otherwise facilitates the all too dangerous ideological split our country now tries to operate within.
“Requiring people to stand up in public for their political acts fosters civic courage,”
wrote Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in Doe v. Reed, “without which democracy is doomed.”
