How Facebook's Political Ad System Is Designed to Polarize
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How Facebook's Political Ad System Is Designed to Polarize
Amid the tense debate over online political advertising, it may seem strange to worry that Facebook gives campaigns too little control over whom their ads target. Yet that's the implication of a study released this week by a team of researchers at Northeastern University, the University of Southern California, and the progressive nonprofit Upturn. By moonlighting as political advertisers, they found that Facebook's algorithms make it harder and more expensive for a campaign to get its message in front of users who don't already agree with them-even if they're trying to.
[...] The paper, still in draft form, is a follow-up to research the group did earlier this year, which found that Facebook's algorithms can dramatically skew the delivery of ads along racial and gender lines even when the advertiser doesn't intend it. That's because while Facebook allows advertisers to design their audience-that's ad targeting-the platform's algorithms then influence who within the audience actually sees the ad, and at what price. That's ad delivery. Because Facebook wants users to see ads that are "relevant" to them, the algorithm essentially pushes a given ad toward users it thinks are most likely already interested in its message. This, the researchers found, can reinforce stereotypes. For example, of the users who saw ads for jobs in the lumber business, 90 percent were male, even though the intended audience was evenly split between men and women. (Facebook is also facing litigation for allegedly allowing advertisers to intentionally discriminate.)
For the new study, the team decided to explore whether the algorithm also skews political ad delivery along partisan lines. Because the company doesn't share that information, they had to run a number of experiments, essentially going undercover to figure out where targeting ends and Facebook's algorithms begin.
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