Elections and Media

After the 2016 presidential election, Republican Party officials credited Facebook with helping Donald Trump win the White House. One senior official singled out a then-28-year-old Facebook employee embedded with the Trump campaign, calling him an “MVP.” Now that key player is working for the other side—as national debate intensifies over Facebook’s role in politics.

The Trump campaign lashed out at Facebook after company executives said they were considering changes to rules around political ads that could affect the campaign’s ability to target its supporters on the platform. The outcry came as Trump’s reelection team has undertaken a massive spending blitz on Facebook aimed at countering the House’s impeachment inquiry. Trump’s page alone promoted more than $830,000 worth of ads in the seven days ending on Nov 17, according to Facebook’s ad archive.

Since the time of the early advertising-supported newspapers, economic incentive has worked to bring people together around a common set of shared information. Maximizing ad revenue meant offending as few readers as possible by at least attempting a balanced presentation of the facts. The search for balance began to retreat with the arrival of cable television, but the economic model of maximizing revenue by maximizing reach still governed. The targeting capability of social media algorithms, however, has extinguished the traditional economic model.

Broadband policy has emerged as a way for Democrats running for President to appeal to primary voters. They emphasize their commitment to "Net Neutrality," often in its most extreme form (i.e., public utility regulation). They also promise expansive (and expensive) government-funded construction of broadband infrastructure. Neither, however, constitutes effective policy.

Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D-South bend), who has been a Silicon Valley favorite in the 2020 presidential race, is calling out several tech giants for harming workers. In his new policy plan, Mayor Buttigieg singles out Facebook, Google and Uber for troubling labor practices, and pledges to hold employers accountable under labor laws, strengthen unions and expand protections for gig workers. “The status quo with companies like Facebook and Uber setting the rules and government sitting on the sidelines must change,” the plan says.

Facebook is considering restricting politicians' ability to use highly detailed demographic and personal information to narrowly target would-be voters with ads, policy chief Nick Clegg confirmed in a possible shift in the social network's broadly permissive policy on political advertising. Clegg declined to discuss any other changes, saying the company is still in the decision-making process.

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) is the only Senate Democrat not co-sponsoring the Save the Internet Act, a bill to restore net neutrality rules that were enacted by the Federal Communications Commission during the Obama administration and reversed in 2017 by President Trump’s FCC Chair, former Verizon attorney Ajit Pai. Instead, Sen Sinema has formed a working group with Sen.

We don’t need to rank in importance the issues of special interest money, ludicrous redistricting, and big media.  They are each part of a linked democratic challenge.  There can be no real democracy without curbing big money.  There can be no real democracy without making Congressional districts representative of the areas they encompass.  There can be no real democracy without an electorate informed by media that digs for the facts citizens need to help chart the future of our country.   Bring these three abuses under control and democracy can flourish again.  Only We the People can make

Internet freedom is increasingly imperiled by the tools and tactics of digital authoritarianism, which have spread rapidly around the globe. Repressive regimes, elected incumbents with authoritarian ambitions, and unscrupulous partisan operatives have exploited the unregulated spaces of social media platforms, converting them into instruments for political distortion and societal control.

Top Republicans are privately worried about a new threat to President Trump’s campaign: the possibility of Facebook pulling a Twitter and banning political ads. Facebook says it won't, but future regulatory pressure could change that.