The Talk of Regulating Internet Ads to Stop Political Influence
Facebook, Google bound to change handling of political ads: Marketing executives
The United States government is concerned with how the public can be influenced by advertisements on the internet. Both Facebook and Google are facing scrutiny for their lack of self-regulation when it comes to Russian operatives buying U.S. political ads on their sites. Political ad consultants are worried and have said that if the tech companies fail to regulate these ads, that government regulation might have to be implemented. In mid-September, Mark Zuckerberg vowed to do more to deter governments from using Facebook to manipulate elections. This was after they released information showing they sold around $100,000 in Russian ads before and after the 2016 U.S. presidential election. He also revealed changes to the way his company handles ads, saying they will make ads visible to all users regardless of whom the ads target. Google said it has no evidence on its ad platform of a Russian propaganda campaign like the one Facebook found, which is interesting. If Google is correct in its findings, that means that Russians believe Facebook is more likely to reach those that are more easily influenced and manipulated. Despite Google being thought as as more expansive, Facebook might be more effective in reaching those certain people across the country. Both companies have resisted regulation of political ads for years, but it seems like it may come whether they like it or not.
Although this article might not directly connect to what we are learning in lecture, I think that this topic is very important to discuss and see how internet ads play such a significant role in our lives. We talked a lot about how websites and companies will sell to advertisers and how different ad slots can lead to different pricing. But what happens when an advertiser has negative intentions? Will companies not care and only worry about profits, or will they take a moral stand and not allow it? Or how about this situation where it is hard to tell the intentions of the ads? Analyzing how different websites pick different advertisers to sell to can become harder with government regulation, restricting what can and cannot be shown to potentially millions of users. Without any regulation, companies can potentially charge more for ads that they know will create controversy and target people that are easily influenced. We also talked about the scores of different webpages, and how that can be determined by how many other webpages link to it. When it comes to outside countries trying to influence certain events within our own country, this is just a game to them that needs to be solved. In a world where technology and the internet have such an overwhelming grasp on our everyday lives, it is a little concerning to see what kind of damage a simple advertisement on the side of your Facebook news feed can do to certain people.