Diffusion of Political Ads
An article published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, titled “The Fight Over Social Media’s Potent Political Ads Just Got More Interesting,” explores how political propaganda can easily be diffused through social networks. Justin Sherman explains how social media ads can now help push potentially misleading message with unprecedented precision. Thus, Twitter has made the decision to stop all political advertising globally on its database due to machine learning-based optimization of messaging and micro-targeting, unchecked misleading information, and completely false information.
Sherman explains that it’s not just the ads that target users but the users themselves spread the false information. A study found that false information diffuses faster than true information. This is because false information aligns more with human biases. Thus, people value false information more, because it aligns with their beliefs. As a result, the threshold for spreading this information is lower. Since people value this information more, a lower percentage of their friends need to adopt it for them themselves to hold it true and pass it along.
The targets of this propaganda are usually trolls, conspiracy theorists, and white supremacits. These groups, who have the highest value for this propaganda diffuse it the easiest, and as more people adopt it more, and more people hold it true. Just as we learned in class. As a result, political campaigns are spending more money to advertise on social media.