Study Blasts Facebook for Allowing Political Ads: System 'Designed to Polarize'

Left-wing tech magazine Wired published a study conducted by several universities and progressive nonprofit Upturn claiming that Facebook’s system of political ads is “designed to polarize,” because it targets voters who are most likely to be interested in its content, i.e, political partisans. Facebook says the findings should not come as a surprise.

The publication of the study is conveniently timed. It comes as Democrats are trying to pressure Facebook to take a more active role in regulating political ads, with repeated accusations that President Trump is spreading “misinformation” about their candidates.

The alleged “polarization” found by the study consists of pro-Democrat ads being more likely to reach Democrat voters, and pro-Republican ads being more likely to reach Republican voters.

This is despite the fact that even Republican campaigns manage to reach a significant number of registered Democrats with their ads, which Wired downplays as “under 40%.”

And, indeed: it was. While the audience for the neutral ad was nearly evenly split, the researchers found that, on average, “Facebook delivers our ads with content from Democratic campaigns to over 65% users registered as Democrats, while delivering ads from Republican campaigns to under 40% users registered as Democrats, despite identical targeting parameters.” Targeting based on Facebook’s classification of users’ political leaning, instead of party registration, led to even more skewed results. Just as important, it cost much more to reach users across the political divide. For example, the study found that it cost 50 percent more to get a conservative voter to see Sanders content than Trump content.

Facebook told Wired that the results of the study are unsurprising given that ads are sent to those who are most likely to be interested in them.

“Findings showing that ads about a presidential candidate are being delivered to people in their political party should not come as a surprise,” said a company spokesperson in an emailed statement. “Ads should be relevant to the people who see them. It’s always the case that campaigns can reach audiences they want with the right targeting, objective, and spend.”

Following pressure from Democrats, Facebook is exploring new ways to label and restrict political ads. However, the platform has not gone as far as Twitter, which has banned political ads altogether, or Google, which took down over 300 of President Trump ads on YouTube.

Are you an insider at Reddit or any other tech company who wants to confidentially reveal wrongdoing or political bias at your company? Reach out to Allum Bokhari at his secure email address allumbokhari@protonmail.com. 

Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News.