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Facebook and Political Advertising

In an article by the Wall Street Journal, it was revealed that one Facebook employee, James Barnes, played an instrumental role in helping Trump win the 2016 elections through the use of targeted advertising. It was reported that Barnes would spend 12 hour days in the Trump headquarters, toying with different advertising methods, such as changing “donate” to “give”, or adjusting the colors of buttons, in order to target very specific demographics. All in all, for every dollar that Barnes spent, there would be at least 2 or 3 dollars that were generated for the Trump campaign, allowing them to make over one million dollars just within the first few days of advertising. This has important implications for Facebook’s political ad policy, which does not fact check ads from politicians, because Barnes proved the efficacy of targeted advertising. If ads continue to have false information, then people of the general populace may be swayed to vote based on non-truths.

This article relates strongly to what we talked about in class, because it relates to the ways that behaviors can cascade through a network. By having stronger advertising, the threshold value may be lowered, allowing more people to adopt this behavior. Targeted advertising such as the Trump advertising on Facebook may strongly cause a strong cascade of people voting Trump.

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-facebooks-embed-in-the-trump-campaign-helped-the-president-win-11574521712

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