Abstract:

A FEW WEEKS ago, we were talking about whether companies like Facebook and Twitter should ban all paid political advertising from their platforms. Now the debate has narrowed to a secondary question: Where political ads are allowed, should their micro-targeting be prohibited? Google is the first to make this restriction formal policy: The company announced on Wednesday that it will “stop allowing highly targeted political ads on its platform” and limit the steering of such messages only to large interest categories. On Thursday, news broke that Facebook, too, may soon prevent “campaigns from targeting only very small groups of people.” These policy changes are designed to curb the negative consequences of the disinformation problem and legitimate political advertising—but they may end up doing little good.

For Mark Zuckerberg in particular, one bombshell has chased the last. Last month, he proclaimed at Georgetown University that his company would take a general stance against censorship in the political context—including over any content, false or true, disseminated by politicians as advertisements over his platforms. That laissez-faire approach to content moderation was met with absolute vilification by many technology experts and critics alike. A few days later, Twitter chief Jack Dorsey made an equally strong announcement, stating that his company was shuttering all political advertising over the platform, effective later this month—essentially, the diametrical opposite of Facebook’s stated position. On November 4, Zuckerberg acceded to meet over dinner with civil rights advocates who had serious concerns about the potential for uncensored political advertising to undermine the interests of marginalized American communities.