A Truthful Twitter
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/24/twitter-will-label-political-ads-including-who-bought-and-spend.html
Twitter will begin labeling political ads with information regarding who bought them and how much was spent on the ad. The new policy will affect electioneering ads, which clearly promote specific candidates or parties for elected office. Twitter is also preparing to testify about Russian involvement in the 2016 election through online political ads. The company will roll out a transparency center designed to show information about all ads on Twitter. Users will be able to see which ads have been targeted toward them using which personal criteria. Political ads will have additional information in the transparency center including who bought them, how much they spent on this ad campaign, and how much they spent on Twitter in general.
The transparency center will have an impact in matching markets. Matching markets rely on information about buyers’ valuations, which is collected by an auctioneer. The values given to the auctioneer may not be truthful. The auctioneer will assign items to buyers to maximize their valuations. After assigning the items, the auctioneer will charge prices for the items and a market will be established.
Telling one’s true valuation is a dominant strategy in matching markets. The dominant strategy is not affected by decisions made by other buyers. Twitter’s userbase will be able to see information on how much advertisers pay for their data in the new transparency center, which will be truthful valuations. With this information, users will know their own value and, at some point, may be able to charge advertisers for using their data. If this occurs, users will become the auctioneers rather than Twitter. This will change the nature and structure of the marketplace.
A user knowing the true value of their own data may also implications on the results of elections. Seeing that one political advertiser has spent more than another to market to a user may influence them to throw their weight behind the advertiser valuing them more. After all, people like knowing they are valued. This could create a venue for PACs and political actors to influence voters through monetary means. Twitter may have to veil the advertisers’ data to protect against this issue.