Mozilla Hits Google, Facebook For 'Microtargeting' Political Ads (thehill.com) 31
Mozilla is calling on Google and Facebook to stop "microtargeting" political ads. "Political speech is critical to democratic discourse, but against the very real circumstances of organized disinformation and organic misinformation today, microtargeting keeps ideas from being debated in the open, and fiction parades as fact," Ashley Boyd, Mozilla's advocacy vice president, said in a statement. "Online platforms can take the important step toward quelling the manipulation by limiting political ads to a scale where they facilitate a public discourse." The Hill reports: Microtargeting, a method which uses consumer data and demographics to narrowly segment audiences, is used by political campaigns to specialize ads for different voting groups. The practice's critics include Federal Election Commission Chairwoman Ellen Weintraub, who wrote in a Washington Post op-ed that microtargeting makes it "easy to single out susceptible groups and direct political misinformation to them with little accountability, because the public at large never sees the ad." Mozilla's call follows reports that Facebook has considered restricting politicians' access to microtargeting.
I like Beau of the Fifth Column's take (Score:3)
TL;DW; Twitter banning poltical adverts means that your ideas have to stand on their own, they can't make it on repetition [youtu.be]. Without the ability to buy ads your ideas stand (or fall) on their own.
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Without the ability to buy ads your ideas stand (or fall) on their own.
In the 2016 election cycle, the candidate who received the most free publicity, by far, in both the primaries and the general election, was Donald Trump.
Do you believe that was because he had the best ideas?
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He had populist ideas suited to Twitter and soundbites and chants. Good ideas in politics are often somewhat complex, which is why you tend to get vague slogans like "change we need" or "for the many, not the few." Trump went with things like "build the wall" and "lock her up."
I'm kind of hoping that he has saturated the political sphere with bombastic speeches and three word slogans so that it's less effective next time. The technique is already failing in the UK with the Tory's "get Brexit done," but we s
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TL;DW; Twitter banning poltical adverts means that your ideas have to stand on their own, they can't make it on repetition [youtu.be]. Without the ability to buy ads your ideas stand (or fall) on their own.
Maybe that's what some people even think it was intended to do, but reality has a way of casting aside best intentions [businessinsider.com]. And if you believe that Twitter has or will become a meritocracy of ideas in absence of political ads I've got a bridge to sell you.
I don't think it's a problem (Score:2)
The problem is repetition, like in the video I liked to. Exxon can run all the ads they want but people will tune them out after the first one. But when there's 1000 shadowy organizations all running with the same talking points that's when folks say "Hey, maybe there is something to this Chinese hoax thing".
Can't see the fuss (Score:4)
Also, choose not to see the ads. ublock origin.
Re:Can't see the fuss (Score:4)
Adblocking makes more sense than anything an ad contains anyway.
The problem with the ad industry is that it is based on incorrect assumptions and essentially leads to a monoculture controlled by a few. It may look cheap to buy an ad at a place like Google but what if your target audience to 99% runs adblockers and the 1% aren't trusted at all by the 99% anyway.
The more annoying an ad is - the more likely it will drive someone to run an adblocker. A single text line may be more effective.
And don't throw up ads for stuff I just bought - that's an imbecile way of doing ads. If you do it 3 to 5 years from now or whatever the life expectancy is for what I bought maybe you'd get a better effect.
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So true. It's always funny to see ads for the stuff I just bought because they detected I was interesting in something. I guess they are hoping to make the sell just incase I was sitting on the fence for the item in question. They don't know we bought it, just researched it a bit.
Using firefox with noscript and duck duck go cuts down on suggested advertising a great deal, if it bothers you that much.
I only ever use Chrome if a site I want to visit absolutely will not work with firefox. Most of the time this
How about not micro-targeting at all! (Score:3)
Forget user tracking entirely and just use the page content as the reference.
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Maybe - but that would only work if someone goes by the first page of a newspaper web site. Some sites are so paywalled that it's the only page that can be seen and if I get ads on a paywalled page - why do I care about paying then?
An ad company is going to ad... (Score:3, Insightful)
If the ad is getting seen and
What the user did after seeing the ad...
Who is going to pay for a new ad with no results and no tracking method?
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All the advertiser needs to know is someone probably saw the ad. Then what the webpage contained as content says a lot about how interested that someone might be in the ad. Same as TV ads associated with the TV programme being viewed.
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Then what the webpage contained as content says a lot about how interested that someone might be in the ad.
Reading content is not the same as agreeing with content.
The content tells you nothing about the reader's age, gender, ethnicity, etc. Young people who vote Republican are very different from old Republicans. Blacks vote democratic for very different reasons than college professors vote Democratic.
Feel free to start an ad company based only on page content. Good luck.
Same as TV ads associated with the TV programme being viewed.
This is why ad dollars are shifting to online and away from TV.
You missunderstand (Score:2)
I'm certainly not expecting this to be any sort of choice for the advertisers.
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Or at least not one they can individually op-out of
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The problem being that Mozilla is at the tail end of the list of corporations that have a right to call such targeted method of political influencing out considering their history of having very extreme political views as an organisation and purging any internal dissent with extreme prejudice.
This is an important call to make, but it needs to be made by someone who is credible in the field of politics. Mozilla is not credible in this field in any meaningful sense of the word.
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Who is going to pay for a new ad with no results and no tracking method?
Pretty much anyone that engages in online advertising [thecorrespondent.com].
Re: An ad company is going to ad... (Score:1)
Susceptible groups, direct political information (Score:1)
Why cant voters see the failed, frail political leaders coughing fit?
be told about the lack of interest and see the lack of ability to give a speech in some US states?
Their past failed actions in decades of politics? All th support for more international wars, the big mil and big gov spending, the decades of failed big gov interventions?
Just buy the media clips and run an ad. Citizens who vote can enjoy all the past decades of events an
How do they know it's happening? (Score:2)
Is it because they're getting info on who's clicking on what from Cloudflare?
Or is it because they're watching what people save with Pocket?
There's no indication of where the information came from in the fine article, so we're left free to speculate.
Re: How do they know it's happening? (Score:1)
Fuck them (Score:2, Troll)
"microtargeting keeps ideas from being debated in the open"
Like when they microtargeted their own CEO for a simple political donation. Fuck Mozilla and their hypocrisy.
Microtargeting will be praised again in the future (Score:1)
maybe after the DNC's fundraising comes out of its recent rough patch. It's just not affordable for them at the moment.
Terrible targeting. (Score:3)
My boy was just complaining today that his YouTube video was interrupted several times with the same political ad for somebody called Tom. Tom is advertising to 13 year olds who like to watch videos about cats farting. I wonder what Google is charging him for that service.
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When you'd get a political ad on a video on Pornhub then it's an instant turn-off.
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Fuck Facebook (Score:1)
Here's an idea (Score:1)