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Comment by eganist | Hacker News Reader

> Facebook is in trouble because it sold political influence at a price that previously non-mainstream actors could afford.

Since there appears to be some confusion (it took me a few passes as well), I interpreted your statement as the following:

> Facebook is in trouble because it sold political influence at a discount from what previously only large nation-state actors could afford.

The implication, if I'm reading correctly, is that any mom-and-pop millionaire could practically launch the same sort of campaign on the platform. Or perhaps more succinctly and dramatically,

Facebook commoditized the weaponization of data.

Am I understanding correctly?

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The traditional DNC/RNC campaign-finance and media-buy systems are not very efficient. They're also based on relationships. Candidates must appeal to broad coalitions of donors so that they can afford the TV airtime necessary to succeed. Ads must not be too damaging to the reputations of the career staffers and media companies putting them on the air. This tends to constrain the ideological space a successful candidate can occupy.

We saw a successful candidate from outside that space because the efficiency of Facebook's ad platform, plus a unique and possibly Russian-intelligence-supplied savvy in wielding it, obviated the need for (as much) donor consensus to achieve a winning level of influence. I don't know about "any mom and pop millionaire," but you need less of them in your court than you used to.

That scandal that has everyone up in arms is Facebook's complicity in Trump's election, which is a consequence of its enablement of extremists in general, which is a consequence of its ad platform's cost-efficiency, which is a consequence of its troves of user data. But it's not data that started a drumbeat of public intellectuals calling for heavy-handed intervention in the New York Times editorial section (a fingerprint we've seen before). It's influence. The establishment is (correctly) not trying to engage populism in a meme war. It's fighting back the way it knows how.

Politics are like medieval royalty. A complex inter-generational web of influence, alliances, and quid pro quo. Support of these influencers was required to earn votes, and policy had to repay these influencers - rather than voters.

Through the application of advanced techniques and data, Facebook enabled the circumvention of that at a shockingly lower cost than in the past.

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