I haven’t seen this covered elsewhere on DKos, but it seems important.
All those propaganda ads on Facebook and elsewhere in 2016 clearly had an impact. One question is, can we somehow clean up social media to make it harder to poison the political environment?
Google just announced that they will require anyone placing election ads to prove who they are (with a government-issued ID) and that they are a U.S. citizen (or permanent resident — foreign entities are barred from paying for election ads). They will also require a disclosure about who’s paying for the ad, although it seems questionable how enforceable and traceable that last bit might be, given all the dark money, astro-turf groups, and shell companies around.
Gizmodo points out that Google’s new policy does not apply to issue ads, only to candidate-specific ads, so that’s an important gap that they can hopefully be convinced to cover. Though I understand why they might be concerned about how broad a category “issue ads” could turn out to be — still, who if not Google could come up with a reasonable algorithm to automatically spot “controversial” and “political” issues based on current news stories?
The Gizmodo article is quite good, kudos to AJ Dellinger. He includes updates on what Twitter and Facebook are doing about this problem too, including their (lukewarm) support for the Honest Ads Act introduced last fall by Senators Klobuchar (D-MN), Warner (D-VA), and McCain (R-AZ). He also posted a related piece about a forum at Stanford Law School last week, the title’s worth quoting in full: “Facebook, Twitter, and Google Would Like to Be the Gatekeepers of Democracy Without the Responsibility.”
Technical fixes have their limitations. Devious players, especially with the resources of, oh, say, Russia, can usually figure out ways around them, given enough time. But it seems a reasonable part of “resisting” to at least try to defend on-line democracy, and transparency is an important part of that toolkit. So maybe drop a line to Google, thank them for the new policy, and get on them to extend it to issue ads and to support the Honest Ads Act.
For folks who have more knowledge about better policies / regulations, I’d be interested in learning about them and about current efforts to get our on-line masters to implement them. Thanks!
