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Comment by dmschulman | Hacker News Reader

I'd agree that the traditional media has had their hands in shaping the narrative to some extent in past elections and pointing to Facebook is slightly convenient for them.

But there is a vast chasm of difference between using social media to organize people and mobilize a campaign's message (as Obama's campaign sort of did in 2008, a lot of that engagement was organic though) and using the Facebook ad network and a network of phony accounts tied to real people in influencer groups to spread a litany of propaganda and false information meant to foment outrage and cultivate doubt in the integrity of the American election system.

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Have you forgotten Rathergate?

My point is twofold:

1. Do not treat Facebook differently from traditional media - we seem to agree on this.

2. The use of phone accounts to influence people should be targeted in and of itself - not just because it happened to help win an election.

And on the side:

>using the Facebook ad network and a network of phony accounts tied to real people in influencer groups to spread a litany of propaganda and false information meant to foment outrage and cultivate doubt in the integrity of the American election system

Influencer groups spreading propaganda and false information is common amongst special interest and lobby groups, in both traditional media and social networks. I do not like it, but I do not see Facebook being in any way special about it.

IIRC tradional lobbying/special interest groups didn't have groups of like minded and opposition minded users with phone numbers and email addresses. One could target supporters of one's opponent with discouraging news to suppress them getting out to vote and also target supporters with outrage inducing data to inspire turnout with pinpoint accuracy making very small ad buys effective at reaching the target audience - this is not possible with traditional media - only blanketing an area with full coverage which is a more costly proposition.

> IIRC tradional lobbying/special interest groups didn't have groups of like minded and opposition minded users with phone numbers and email addresses.

Like minded they frequently had, opposition minded was harder to come by though there were lots of methods of targeting by demographic correlates in many case (views often correlate with some combination of age, race, income, etc. which then correlates with the audience of various media outlets.)

Lobbying groups have always been on the cutting edge of media targetting.

At what level of accuracy is it acceptable? Cable outlets allow for a fairly targeted ad campaign (limited to one town, for example). Granted, perhaps not as well targeted as Facebook, Google, etc. But we should give a good justification of where we want to draw the line. It sounds like Facebook is getting criticism for merely being more efficient than traditional media.

As if we're saying "Yeah, we can tolerate the concept of ads, as long as they're fairly inefficient".

Ultimately, your comment sounds like the issue isn't about elections, but the dangers of extremely effective ad distribution networks (Google, Facebook, etc). As a tool, it can be used for all sorts of mass influence leading to outcomes some people do not like - that are not inherently tied to elections. Examples could be effective ads targeting a particular racial demographic regarding education. I don't see that being any more or less desirable than using it to affect an election.

I'm all for that conversation, as long as it is about the broader topic and not tied to the much narrower topic of influencing elections.

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