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Are we being unfair by only pointing to how FB had a negative impact on the US election? Unlike the other platforms, Facebook and Twitter are the only ones tha
by Zimahl 9y ago
Are we being unfair by only pointing to how FB had a negative impact on the US election?
Unlike the other platforms, Facebook and Twitter are the only ones that also manage the content that the end-user sees. This would be fine if it was only targeted ads, but it's all content that can be manipulated. A user may think they are seeing a legitimate news story or a post 'liked' from their friends. This gives it much more weight than an Adsense ad on a website.
There's also the social metrics that can be used to target you - many people were targeted with anti-Hillary news (true or fake) even though they weren't Trump supporters. This was done to sew voter apathy into the election, turning a 'might as well vote Hillary' (say, Bernie supporters) into a 'why bother' - no vote is half as bad as a vote for the other candidate. And this exact thing happened in swing states where Hillary ended up with really bad turnout, thus costing her the election.
I can't think of a way Google or other ad networks could pull this off, that's why it's fair to attack Facebook over this.