{"id":40802244924,"date":"2019-11-15T13:46:00","date_gmt":"2019-11-15T18:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/?p=40802244924"},"modified":"2023-01-18T11:26:46","modified_gmt":"2023-01-18T16:26:46","slug":"big-tech-fake-news-and-political-advertising","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/2019\/11\/15\/big-tech-fake-news-and-political-advertising\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Tech, Fake News, and Political Advertising"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Vincent Grassi, Monmouth University Polling Institute Intern<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Social media has had a huge impact on politics by shaping public discourse and revamping civic engagement. However, as we have seen with foreign interference in elections, social media is an outlet for everyone, including what many refer to as online \u201cbad actors.\u201d Here, we\u2019ll look at how big tech companies (namely Facebook, Google, and Twitter) have been taxed with combating the spread of fake news and disinformation ahead of the 2020 election. And, more specifically, we\u2019ll examine their role in safeguarding political speech while also acting to dismantle false or deceptive political advertisements shared on social media. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fears concerning disinformation campaigns that target voters and our elections were chiefly birthed from the revelation of a Russian state-backed online influence operation<\/a> that maliciously used social media to interfere in the 2016 election. According to a Monmouth University Poll<\/a> from March of 2018, most Americans (87%) believed outside groups or agents were actively trying to plant fake news stories on social media sites like Facebook and YouTube, and 71% felt this was a serious problem. Nearly three-in-ten (29%) believed that social media outlets were mostly responsible for the dissemination of fake news, although a majority (60%) said they were partly responsible but other media sources were more to blame. In addition, over two-thirds of Americans (69%) felt that Facebook and YouTube weren\u2019t doing enough to stop the spread of fake news. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the lead up to the 2020 election, Facebook,\nTwitter, and Google have taken responsibility for eliminating social media accounts\noperated by foreign actors that intend to mislead the citizens of other\ncountries. For example, Facebook has focused on removing accounts that take\npart in what it deems \u201ccoordinated inauthentic behavior,\u201d or networks of\naccounts that are intentionally trying to mislead others. According to an\narticle on Facebook\nNewsroom<\/a>, Nathaniel Gleicher, the company\u2019s head of cybersecurity\npolicy, said, \u201cIn the past year alone, we have announced and taken down over 50\nnetworks worldwide for engaging in CIB, including ahead of major democratic\nelections.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deceptive practices on social media\nplatforms are not only attributed to foreign agents, but also American citizens.\nGleicher said, \u201cWhile significant public attention has been on foreign\ngovernments engaging in these types of violations, over the past two years, we\nhave also seen non-state actors, domestic groups and commercial companies\nengaging in this behavior.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recently, the issue of false ads was\nbrought to the forefront when a controversial\nTrump campaign advertisement<\/a> about Joe Biden was published on Facebook,\nTwitter, and Google\u2019s YouTube. The ad has been largely regarded as spreading false,\nunfounded claims about the former vice president\u2019s past involvement in Ukraine.\nBiden\u2019s campaign urged the social media giants to remove the advertisement from\ntheir platforms, but they declined. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Facebook\u2019s CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been under fire for this decision. In a speech on free expression<\/a> given at Georgetown University after his decision, Zuckerberg said, \u201cI know many people disagree, but, in general, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s right for a private company to censor politicians or the news in a democracy. And we\u2019re not an outlier here. The other major internet platforms and the vast majority of media also run these same ads.\u201d Also in the speech, the Facebook CEO revealed that the company does not fact-check political ads. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since then, Facebook has been under\nheavy scrutiny and, according to an article posted to Facebook\nNewsroom<\/a> on October 21, they are looking to make some changes to\naddress the problem. The article reads, \u201cOver the next month, content across\nFacebook and Instagram that has been rated false or partly false by a\nthird-party fact-checker will start to be more prominently labeled so that\npeople can better decide for themselves what to read, trust and share.\u201d  Facebook\u2019s\nplan to protect the integrity of the U.S. 2020 elections includes fighting\nforeign interference campaigns, increasing transparency by showing how much\npresidential candidates have spent on ads, and reducing misinformation by\nimproving its fact-checking labels and investing in media literacy programs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In response to Zuckerberg\u2019s defense of\nFacebook\u2019s policy, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced that Twitter will do the\nopposite and not allow any political advertising on its platform starting at\nthe end of the month. Dorsey explained the decision by highlighting some\nfactors that should be considered in the ongoing debate, tweeting<\/a>,\n\u201cInternet political ads present entirely new challenges to civic discourse:\nmachine learning-based optimization of messaging and micro-targeting, unchecked\nmisleading information, and deep fakes. All at increasing velocity,\nsophistication, and overwhelming scale.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While both Twitter and Facebook have\naddressed their platform\u2019s policies on political advertisements, Google has\nrefrained from commenting on YouTube\u2019s policy. According to Google\u2019s\ntransparency report<\/a>, they received around $126 million in revenue\nfrom political advertisements since May 31st<\/sup> 2018 running 172,308\nads. Also, findings from Quartz<\/a>\nshow that the Trump campaign\u2019s controversial advertisement appeared more often\non YouTube than it did on Facebook. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the Democratic candidates for\npresident have signaled their frustration with the social media giants. Leading\ndemocratic candidate Elizabeth Warren targeted Facebook by posting her own purposely\nfalse advertisement on the platform stating that Zuckerberg had endorsed\nPresident Trump\u2019s reelection in order to see if it would be approved (it was).\nAnother candidate, Kamala Harris, urged Twitter to suspend President Trump\u2019s\ntwitter account partly due to a series of tweets about the Ukraine scandal\nwhistleblower and the impeachment inquiry in which, she believes, the president\nviolated Twitter\u2019s terms of service by using the platform to obstruct justice\nand incite violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While big tech companies are taxed with\ndisrupting foreign disinformation campaigns, they have also had to focus on\ndomestic issues such as the viral spread of misinformation. Another concern has\nappeared over their political advertising policies as well and the debate over\nhow social media companies should approach political speech on their platforms.\nIs it better to not fact-check political social media advertisements, ban them altogether,\nor is there some middle ground that can be deemed effective at safeguarding\npolitical speech online? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Vincent Grassi, Monmouth University Polling Institute Intern Social media has had a huge impact on politics by shaping public discourse and revamping civic engagement. However, as we have seen with foreign interference in elections, social media is an outlet for everyone, including what many refer to as online \u201cbad actors.\u201d Here, we\u2019ll look at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40802244924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802244924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40802244924"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802244924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40802253900,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802244924\/revisions\/40802253900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40802244924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40802244924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40802244924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}