2 ms·

Those aren't even all separate points. At the end of the day, Facebook is beholden to republican (not really "right wing" per se) advertising dollars more than

Those aren't even all separate points. At the end of the day, Facebook is beholden to republican (not really "right wing" per se) advertising dollars more than it is to spending on opposing points. This is just for demographic reasons: Facebook has to compete hard for eyeballs among young/urban/techie/minority users. Those folks are fickle with their tastes and willing to try more platforms. And they're less sensitive to advertising in general. Facebook has lots of them, but they certainly aren't dominant in that market. But old white folk? They're all on Facebook. Really, they're ALL on Facebook. Facebook probably has 90%+ of all social media advertising revenue in this demographic. And they skew heavily republican. So who's interests are they going to serve? When Facebook's executives feel pressure to put their fingers on the fact check scale, in which direction are they going to tilt it?

disgruntledphd2 6y ago
Facebook make an irrelevant amount of money from political advertising. If they didn't really believe that it was important to allow on their platform, then they would have banned it years ago, as it causes them nothing but bad press and blowback.
- newacct583 6y ago
  I'd want to see numbers about that before I believe it; I don't think it's true. Certainly from looking over the shoulders of my older relatives, political and issue ads make up a very large percentage of the paid content they see.
  - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
    Yeah, for less than 25% of each four year period, and only in swing states (so I suspect probably Florida and Ohio get most of it). Seriously, I definitely saw some numbers (maybe from the FT) and it was like less than 1% political advertising revenue. That's maybe 10-15 times smaller than gaming, and maybe 30 times smaller than ecommerce.
    - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
      Also, note that pages have posts that look incredibly like ads (the Sponsored thing is pretty subtle), so it can be hard to actually measure which (of any) of the posts are ads.

disgruntledphd2 6y ago

Facebook make an irrelevant amount of money from political advertising. If they didn't really believe that it was important to allow on their platform, then they would have banned it years ago, as it causes them nothing but bad press and blowback.

newacct583 6y ago
I'd want to see numbers about that before I believe it; I don't think it's true. Certainly from looking over the shoulders of my older relatives, political and issue ads make up a very large percentage of the paid content they see.
- disgruntledphd2 6y ago
  Yeah, for less than 25% of each four year period, and only in swing states (so I suspect probably Florida and Ohio get most of it). Seriously, I definitely saw some numbers (maybe from the FT) and it was like less than 1% political advertising revenue. That's maybe 10-15 times smaller than gaming, and maybe 30 times smaller than ecommerce.
  - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
    Also, note that pages have posts that look incredibly like ads (the Sponsored thing is pretty subtle), so it can be hard to actually measure which (of any) of the posts are ads.