The Future of Political Advertising on Social Media
By Anu Shetty
The following article was featured in the December 2019 edition of The Campus.
Recounting back to his firstsemester of college, during the midst of the 2016 presidential election, JacobSchwartz, a current senior at The City College of New York, recalls the variouspoorly photoshopped political posts on Facebook depicting some candidates asthe devil, determined to destroy democracy. As someone who consumes a decentamount of news through various social media platforms, Schwartz describes, “Itwas hard to avoid people sharing those posts with their firmly stated opinionsattached.”
The role of social media in thelives of Americans has changed drastically over the last few decades. Formerlyintended as an online platform to connect with and share posts with friends andfamily all over the world, the most popular social media companies, such asFacebook, Twitter, and YouTube, have taken on the role as outlets to connectpeople with political figures and obtain national and local news.
According to data from the PewResearch Center, 67% of Facebook users and 71% of Twitter users say theyreceive news from these respective sites. Of those, the percentages of18-26-year-old’s that use the sites as a news source are 26% for Facebook and33% for Twitter.
Historically speaking, the18-26-year-old age group is least likely to vote, though it is true that theirparticipation in the 2018 midterm election had increased over 15% from the lastmidterm election in 2014. As one of the main channels of news for the youngerportion of America’s voting demographic, social media companies have takendifferent approaches to manage the content people are able to see on theirsites.
On October 30th, Jack Dorsey, theCEO of Twitter, announced in a series of tweets the company’s decision to stopall political advertising, whether it be from a specific candidate or a messageregarding a political issue, on its social media platform. Dorsey acknowledgedthe way that the company’s past policies had allowed paid advertisements totarget groups of people that might otherwise have not come into contact with suchinformation, and recounts the importance of choice in social media. He defendshis position by stating, “Paying for reach removes that decision, forcinghighly optimized and targeted political messages on people. We believe thisdecision should not be compromised by money.”
Dorsey rebutted claims that thedecision would help the incumbent by emphasizing the number of small movementsthat have reached a national scale without having paid advertising. Hisannouncement concluded by emphasizing that his decision did not have to do withfreedom of speech, but with paid reach. He stated that paid political reach canhave unforeseen consequences that today’s democracy is not prepared for andthat regulators need to be proactive in their attempts to provide equalopportunity for all candidates.
The decision comes after much debateover the role of companies in censoring paid political advertisements, anoutlet that has been known to spread disingenuous information and sway thetides in past political elections. Twitter and other major social medianetworks, such as Facebook and YouTube, have been under scrutiny for thecritical role their platforms played in fostering the Russian campaign tobollix the 2016 presidential election.
The stance that Facebook’s CEO MarkZuckerberg has taken has received intense criticism from many politicians,including Elizabeth Warren, who has singled out Zuckerberg’s passive approachto the issue. Warren’s campaign purchased a Facebook advertisement falselyclaiming that Zuckerberg and Facebook are endorsing President Trump’sreelection, in an effort to call out his apathy by allowing Facebook to be a“disinformation-for-profit” machine.
Zuckerberg has since defended hisposition by invoking the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of speech andagreeing with the Federal Communications Commission’s decision to not letcompanies censor speech, but to instead let voters decide.
Like many others attempting to makesense of the contentious topic, R. B. Bernstein, a pre-law and politicalscience professor at the City College of New York’s Skadden Program, seems tobe torn. He states, “Sometimes the problem looks as if we have to make a distinctionbetween people using speech to carry on the debate, to express or advocateideas, or to challenge other people’s ideas, as opposed to people using speechto injure other people, to cause damage, or to cause harm. But how do we drawthat distinction, and how do we make it work?”
While Zuckerberg acknowledges thatsome of the advertisements are spreading misinformation, he claims that theyare still newsworthy and deserving of public discourse. The major issue withthis claim is the amount of “firehosing” done on such sites. “Firehosing,” aterm coined by Rand researchers reporting on Russian propaganda tactics, meanspushing out as many lies as often as possible to overwhelm the public and makeit impossible to continually disprove them.
Though concerns over firehosing,freedom of speech, and paid political reach are inundating the conversation, itis hard to predict how long it will be before people see, if at all, theimpacts the CEOs’ decisions will have. Dorsey’s new policy will go into effecton November 22nd, just two days after the fifth democratic presidential debate.
For now, everyone is going to haveto patiently wait, as even the legal experts amongst us are unsure of how theevents will unfold. Exasperated, Berstein looks at the ongoing fight andstates, “I have studied the Constitution my whole life and I do not know whatto say.”
