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Ad.watch – Breaking open Facebook's machine of political persuasion
- oriettaxx 7y agoI am not able to understand what it is: can somebody help?
- altharaz 7y agoFrom my understanding, it's a dataviz of Facebook ads linked to politics. For instance, if we select "Browse per country" and then "France", you can see political ads, with their political party, their content, their settings, etc.
- romanovcode 7y agoYou can, for example, see ads that are targeted for one country e.g. US but are paid with different currency e.g. RUB.
- Angostura 7y agoI fumbled about in the Map tab for a while, not getting anywhere. But if you select your country and various parameters, using the 'Timeline' and 'Content' buttons gives you an idea of how targeted ads changed over time and what the content was. ... I think.
- lamb_duh 7y agoIt's unbearably slow
- dawg- 7y agoI love the idea, but the interface needs some work. In my humble opinion, your home page should be the interactive map part - show people the good stuff as quickly as possible. Those who want to read about the project will find their way to the info. Also, the map should be a little more intuitive to use. Don't make people dig for the gold.
- oliveshell 7y agoAgreed. Mobile accessibility would also help get this information in front of more eyeballs. I couldn’t make heads or tails of the site on my phone.
- rhcom2 7y agoIt's a tableau embed so unfortunately I think this is the limit of what you can do with tableau.
- thedonkeycometh 7y agoReally don't fully understand why facebook is being accused of creating this. And the AD and PR agencies are being let off scott free? Granted, facebook are culpable ethically for not appreciating that the manipulation afforded to advertisers could be utilised towards political persuasion. Why, then, if the tools are so powerful, are we not examining the power of the advertising industry for utilising the latest studies in psychology and anthropology? Making us request specific drugs from our doctors, or beer for our fridge, or thinking that some items may make us happy? None of which may be the best choice for us, or actually work. Why is it different for political organisations to manipulate the population using those tools than it is for multinationals?
- 52-6F-62 7y agoIt's not different, and advertising has been a focus of many since the 80's. Ever seen they live? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI8AMRbqY6w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI8AMRbqY6w https://www.adbusters.org/ https://www.adbusters.org/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n7GfVFC6K8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n7GfVFC6K8
- oriettaxx 7y agoah, no I got it: "They live", by John Carpenter (great that https://www.adbusters.org/ https://www.adbusters.org/ thanks!)
- helloguillecl 7y agoThis is something that Facebook and ad-serving companies should be fully transparent about. * Who is paying for their political propaganda? * How much was spent? * What were the ads? * How was it paid? Not being able to track ad spending by political parties, governments or individuals opens opens a huge opportunity for political corruption.
- deogeo 7y agoThere's a problem in how do you classify ads into political and non-political. But then, why not make all ad spending public? What benefit is there to society in keeping the source of ads secret?
- inetknght 7y ago> make all ad spending public I like this idea tbqh
- tudelo 7y agoI guess one downside for those selling the ads is that other companies could easily attempt to poach based on this information... what upside would there be for a company who sells ads?
- deogeo 7y agoThey can compete in offering a better product/service, instead of with a secret client list. Advertising itself is about connecting buyers and sellers - so making that information public would make the market all the more efficient! What's good for the goose and all that. Besides, the world is drowning in ads. Any downside for advertisers is an undiluted upside for society at large.
- isostatic 7y agoFacebook does - at least in the UK. Try to run a "political" ad and there's a lot of hoops to jump through.
- GWSchulz 7y agoI’ve been an investigative reporter for a long time, and data like this are essential for reporting on campaign activity in the digital age. Only looking at contributions and expenditures in disclosure reports isn’t enough anymore. This isn’t the most intuitive viz on the planet. But dear smart tech people and data scientists with a strong public interest streak: Please keep doing this and get it online. At least for me, when I see it, I’ll put it in front of other journos on social. We compete but help each other out by sharing tips like this through professional orgs and journalism boards like Y Combinator (which I’ve followed closely for years). Many of us are particularly keen on helping young journalists become natural investigators, and the next generation has a huge amount of data smarts already. Let’s put it to work for justice and fairness and all that mushy human freedom and better leadership stuff.
- 52-6F-62 7y agoThanks for saying this. I'll add, just as general observation from within the industry, that because of the shrinking profits and massive budget cuts insisted upon by a lot of corporate parent companies many outlets are short-staffed. The enormous (and I've personally witnessed enough to suit the use of that term) reduction in editorial and arts staff at major outlets has stretched the surviving teams pretty thin. It gets harder and harder to source and confirm this kind of data, and then present it, within the timelines available.
- ISNIT 7y agoSeems quite similar to https://whotargets.me/en/ https://whotargets.me/en/
- eternalny1 7y agoThere is a major problem with the "Region" selection when viewing the United States data. It includes all sorts of global regions and even "(null)" when it should simply list US states and territories.
- isostatic 7y ago> It includes all sorts of global regions and even "(null)" when it should simply list US states and territories. Yes because political adverts don't run anywhere apart from the U.S.
- thatthing 7y agoDidn't Facebook make this data available months ago? Where is the pressure for google to do the same?
- michaelaiello 7y agohttps://transparencyreport.google.com/political-ads/region/US https://transparencyreport.google.com/political-ads/region/U...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Ambele 7y agoThis is a fantastic website and I'm excited to see how it will look in 2020! It seems to be missing some political actors though which makes it appear like some democratic candidates aren't spending money on ads which isn't the case. Some candidates are being tracked; others aren't.
- _edo 7y agoI'm not sure if I'm understanding the map correctly: Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (literally the top of the list alphabetized by first name) spent $1.5 million on 9,576 ads, garnering 60 million impressions, mostly for fundraising, and it all started after she assumed office? And the ads are spread out across the country with California edging out her home state of New York? What a weird coincidence - both Ocasio Cortez and Cory Booker placed more ads in California than their home states (New York and New Jersey), but Kamala Harris put more ads in New York than her home state California. I don't know what this data means, I'm uncomfortable with Facebook getting heat when other tech companies aren't (because people think Facebook helped Trump), but this is a really interesting data set if you start to play around with it.
- epiphanitus 7y ago>> Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (literally the top of the list alphabetized by first name) spent $1.5 million on 9,576 ads, garnering 60 million impressions, mostly for fundraising, and it all started after she assumed office? And the ads are spread out across the country with California edging out her home state of New York? These ads are probably for fundraising purposes. Congresspeople face re-election every two years and thus spend a lot of time fundraising. Also, if she raises extra money she can put it into a PAC and use it to support/oppose candidates in other races. This is a practice that was perfected by Lyndon Johnson who used campaign cash from his friends in the oil industry to bolster support for his policies amongst his peers. >> What a weird coincidence - both Ocasio Cortez and Cory Booker placed more ads in California than their home states (New York and New Jersey), but Kamala Harris put more ads in New York than her home state California. This is because they already built donor/supporter bases in their own states where their name ID is strongest. Rather than advertise at home where they are already household names it make sense to take out ads in other states which they want to win.
- humble_engineer 7y agoIt is worrisome to me that people can consider Facebook a platform for misinformation, while major establishment media companies can freely publish articles deliberately trying to muddy the waters every, single, day.