The major social media companies (Twitter, Facebook, and Google) are navigating a political minefield as they try to reduce domestic misinformation and limit foreign actors from manipulating advertising and spreading rumors.
Social media has become the target of prominent advertising and attack campaigns launched by some people online to influence the choice of the US President during the election period. Democratic rival Joe Biden has spent thousands of dollars to advertise on Facebook with dozens of ads on the platform. He asked his supporters to sign a petition calling on Facebook to remove inaccurate statements, especially those coming from Trump.
Social media companies are navigating their way as they try to reduce domestic misinformation and avoid foreign actors from manipulating ads and news posted on them, as they did in the recent US presidential election.
Although both presidential campaigns receive millions of dollars each week on Facebook and Google ads that boost their exposure, both also use online advertising to criticize tech platforms for their policies. Trump accuses Twitter and Snapchat of interfering in this year’s elections.
Americans, after all, are on high alert over platform politics after discovering that Russian trolls posted divisive messages to influence previous US elections, and even used rubles to buy Facebook ads targeted at American audiences in the 2016 election. Research already shows the Kremlin is in on it.
Since the last presidential election, Facebook and Twitter have banned voting-related misinformation and pledged to identify and shut down networks of illegitimate accounts run by domestic or foreign troublemakers. Before this year’s election, Twitter banned political ads entirely, a decision a company spokesperson told The Associated Press it stands behind.
Facebook, along with Google, has begun disclosing campaign ad spending while prohibiting non-Americans from buying American political ads.
That politics will no doubt be on full display Wednesday, when four big tech CEOs – Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Google’s Sundar Pichai and Apple’s Tim Cook – testify before a House Judiciary Committee panel as part of a congressional investigation into the dominance of tech companies.
Biden has focused on Facebook, with the #MoveFastFixIt campaign calling out Facebook for not doing enough to protect users from foreign interference or deceiving them with lies, especially those spread by Trump about such mail-in voting. His campaign last month spent nearly $10,000 (about Rs 7,46,800) to run ads rebuking the company on its own platform.
“We could lie to you, but we won’t,” says one Biden ad. “Donald Trump and his Republican allies, on the other hand, are spending millions on Facebook ads like this one that spread dangerous misinformation about everything from how to vote to the legitimacy of our democratic process.”
Despite the criticism of Facebook, the Biden campaign said it is still buying millions of dollars in Facebook ads because it is one of the few ways to counter Trump’s false posts. Louisiana State University political communications professor Kathleen Searles said the ads are also a cheap and effective way for campaigns to rally supporters who are dissatisfied with the platforms.
Source: gadgets
