Article Link
Al Drago, the New York Times
With Facebook and Google attracting 85% of all digital political advertising, the Senate is trying to figure out how to regulate the content and source of these ads. Russian companies anonymously purchased at least $100,000 of ads on Facebook, where more than half of American adults now get their news. Given that the Trump campaign spent $85 million on its Facebook strategy, which designed numerous iterations of targeted advertising to prospective voters and that Federal election laws prevents foreign influence in elections through advertising, government regulatory intervention will be necessary to protect the integrity of future elections. The Klobuchar-Warner-McCain bill calls for greater transparency and accountability for online political advertising.
Discussion Questions:
1. Will it be enough to know the source of online political advertising and how do you believe content could be regulated?
2. Do you believe companies like Facebook, Google, and Youtube need to do more to patrol the political advertising on their websites or is this the government's responsibility?
3. How can the integrity of next year's midterm election and the 2020 presidential election be better protected given all of the meddling and false information that plagued the 2016 election?
4 comments:
A short term solution could be to regulate the media, to have the companies search their users' posts for false info and such. But does this solve the root problem, or does it simply attempt to suppress a symptom? I think that in the long term, it is more beneficial to properly educate people on recognizing and properly digesting false information. This will take a long time, but schools must make internet proficiency a priority, alongside math and english and history and such.
1. Will it be enough to know the source of online political advertising and how do you believe content could be regulated?
No, probably not. People have always been susceptible to yellow journalism and fake news, and even if there is probable cause beyond a shadow of a doubt that the news source is garbage, people will still read it. Simply ask the National Enquirer, a low-quality Trump-leaning gossip magazine that can claim an average weekly circulation of about one million copies. Content should be regulated by private industry, individuals, and existing government mandates regarding libel.
2. Do you believe companies like Facebook, Google, and Youtube need to do more to patrol the political advertising on their websites or is this the government's responsibility?
If anybody has been in an AP Government class with me, then to you I would say you know what I believe about the government’s proper role in the market place and in society (a minimal role, if any at all.) For the rest of you, the government regulating the flow of content and information is completely anathema to our founding values of freedom of expression and freedom of commerce. John Adams tried to do this with the Alien and Sedition acts. Tipper Gore tried to do this with her work with the Parents Music Resource Center. Both of these actions were egregious, unconstitutional, and just plain wrong. Wether content is or is not regulated should be entirely up to the company choosing to display the content, but this is both right and responsibility to the company. I believe that a company would know how to be responsible in term of distributing content-after all, if they were to distribute fake news, they would lose consumer confidence in the reliability of their product-not exactly good for business.
3. How can the integrity of next year's midterm election and the 2020 presidential election be better protected given all of the meddling and false information that plagued the 2016 election?
That’s up to the American people to discern. The government can’t hold their hand and say what’s fake news and whats a viable source-the people have to decide what is fake news, and what is not. Private buisnesses and watchdog groups should give out guidelines and tips on how to spot fake or low-quality news articles and sites, but the bottom line is that the circulation of information, whatever the quality, is a guaranteed constitutional right.
I don't think that giving the source of online political advertising will be enough to fully curb some of the sensational appeals that we saw in Trump's digital campaign, but holding people accountable for what they say online is a given. From a practical standpoint, the responsibility for filtering this information has to rest at a private level, be it Facebook or Youtube or whatever media platform is featuring political content. Expecting the federal government to go through this content is an expensive endeavor, and to me sounds a little bit invasive. Of course, it is hard to regulate private individuals, but I do think that these companies can do a lot more to prevent the publishing of patently false emotional appeals by political candidates. It is clear that the public does not fact check information it sees on social media, so it is social media's responsibility to do this for them if it hosts false content.
Similar to the blog comments above, I do not think that simply publishing the source of the blog comments will really affect people’s view of the ads that much. However, it should still be a requirement so that a viewer has information to determine whether or not they will believe the ad. I don’t think that the responsibility lies with private companies either, or the government. As we’ve seen before, allowing the government to draw the line between what can and cannot be published usually goes badly. I think that we should go with Max’s suggestion and make sure people are aware of the importance of “internet proficiency.” Many people, including myself, let their guard down and don’t look critically at ads and other information when browsing Facebook and other websites, especially if they’re not news websites. However, people should be made increasingly aware of the dangers of not recognizing false information. I’ve already seen a few “guides” on how to recognize fake news, ads, etc. on Facebook and other websites, and we should make sure that there are comprehensive and helpful guides through which people can learn how to recognize false information on the internet.
Post a Comment