How Facebook Could Tilt the 2016 Election

Over the past two years, journalists have discovered the incredible power wielded by Facebook’s News Feed. The feature can divert massive amounts of money and attention to news sites. Detecting changes in how News Feed works is notoriously hard: In today’s New York Times, web publishers fret that they are rarely sure whether drops in traffic from News Feed are felt across the industry or only happening to them. But there is an easier way that Facebook (or a few rogue engineers) could change American history, and it would be even trickier to verify.

Since 2008, Facebook has displayed an “I Voted!” button on every major election day. If you tell Facebook you voted, your name and picture appear near the button when other friends view it. Facebook encourages your friends to go out and vote as well. Social pressure like this can be quite potent, and the company has often deployed this button for experimental ends. In 2010, researchers at the University of California used the button and internal Facebook data to conduct a “61-million-person experiment in social influence and political mobilization.” They found that someone was 0.39 percent more likely to vote if they were told by Facebook that their friends had voted. Because of the social ripple effects of this, they concluded that more than 340,000 additional votes were cast in that midterm election because of the “I Voted!” button. If Facebook’s effects on voter turnout are as large as this research suggests, then Facebook could easily skew the 2016 election.