{"id":47789,"date":"2019-11-08T05:42:38","date_gmt":"2019-11-08T04:42:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/?p=47789"},"modified":"2019-11-08T05:42:48","modified_gmt":"2019-11-08T04:42:48","slug":"facebook-and-google-may-limit-micro-targeting-for-political-ads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/2019\/11\/facebook-and-google-may-limit-micro-targeting-for-political-ads\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook and Google may limit micro-targeting for political ads"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Facebook and Google are considering plans to limit micro-targeting for political advertisements, according to The Guardian<\/em><\/a>, following widespread criticism over ad policies and their effect on the democratic process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Micro-targeting allows advertisers to precisely target small segments of users, tailoring ads for each one. In political advertising, critics are concerned that politicians can use micro-targeting to promote different platforms to voters of different demographics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Facebook has faced escalating criticism over its role in the political process, particularly since last year\u2019s Cambridge Analytica revelations. And last month, the company said it would not fact-check ads from politicians, drawing another wave of criticism<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Late last month, a letter from hundreds of Facebook employees, to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, called for a new approach to political ads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the letter, employees warned: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe risk with allowing this is that it\u2019s hard for people in the electorate to participate in the \u2018public scrutiny\u2019 that we\u2019re saying comes along with political speech. These ads are often so micro-targeted that the conversations on our platforms are much more siloed than on other platforms. Currently we restrict targeting for housing and education and credit verticals due to a history of discrimination. We should extend similar restrictions to political advertising.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twitter has announced plans to ban political ads altogether, putting even more pressure on Facebook. And with their announcement<\/a>, CEO Jack Dorsey seemed to attack Facebook\u2019s justifications for its ad policies:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis isn\u2019t about free expression. This is about paying for reach. And paying to increase the reach of political speech has significant ramifications that today\u2019s democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle. It\u2019s worth stepping back in order to address.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The move was first reported Monday by NBC News, which cited anonymous sources. Facebook vice-president Nick Clegg confirmed the policy change in an interview with Politico<\/a> on Thursday. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re now working actively to reflect, in the face of all the criticisms, on what we should do to adjust our own posture on all this. We want to get this right,\u201d Clegg said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Facebook and Google had both been asked<\/a>\u00a0by advocacy organizations to ban political ads entirely in the UK, ahead of the general election. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But despite similar political ad policies, Google\u00a0has only recently begun to receive the kind of criticism<\/a>\u00a0that has plagued Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to\u00a0a\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/em>\u00a0report<\/a>, employees at Google say the company is also considering changes to its political ad policies, and speculated they may limit micro-targeting. Google\u2019s advertising policies would apply to all of its platforms, including YouTube.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s encouraging that online giants are starting to take their responsibilities seriously and recognising the need to act to stop the spread of disinformation,\u201d said Catherine Stihler, chief executive of the Open Knowledge Foundation. \u201cBut this can\u2019t just be left to social media platforms to take action by themselves \u2013 our analogue electoral laws need to catch up with the digital age and ensure we build a fair, free and open future.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo by Denys Vitali<\/a> from Pixabay<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Facebook and Google are considering plans to limit micro-targeting for political advertisements, according to The Guardian, following widespread criticism over ad policies and their effect on the democratic process.  Micro-targeting allows advertisers to precisely target small segments of users, tailoring ads for each one. In political advertising, critics are concerned that politicians can use micro-targeting to promote<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":47790,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[113],"tags":[4485,983],"class_list":["post-47789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-finance","tag-facebook-ads","tag-politics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}