Zuckerberg defends political ads that will be 0.5% of 2020 revenue | Hacker News Reader

Zuckerberg defends political ads that will be 0.5% of 2020 revenue

techcrunch.com

27 pointsnotlukesky7 comments

From the article:

> Update: It wasn’t clear if issue ads and PAC ads were counted in Facebook’s 0.5% figure, but now the company says that number is just for ads run directly by politicians.]

I'm more curious what % of Facebook's ad revenue was from political ads for each of the last few years. I believe Zuckerberg stated during his most recent congressional testimony that it was a single-digit percentage of total ad revenue, but I could be misremembering.

I am also curious how much political advertising takes place on facebook, outside facebook's ad campaigns - i.e.: viral posts. I am more worried about those kinds of "ads", as those are more difficult to track.

Is it really about the 0.5% of revenue or is it about the political influence? As one of the larger intermediaries, Facebook is going to have some influence, possibly with plans to expand it going forward.

A figure from ca. 2004 was that the U.S. collectively spends one half the amount the chewing gum industry does in advertising a year in political advertising during a presidential cycle.

I found such comparisons a glib way to normalize malfunction.

Is 0.5% supposed to be low? Imagine if 0.5% of GDP were spent on political campaigning. That's a huge amount, next to all the actual economic activity that should be occurring.

0.5% puts in context that if a small drop in facebook usage would make the political ads a net negative. Just 1% of users dropping facebook in protest, or a small percentage of users reducing their usage because of fatigue from politica adverts would make political adverts not worth the cost. The tiny share of revenue for political ads is going to jeopardise the massive majority of revenue.

The real underlying issue we need to address is that it's nothing to do with revenue. Facebook has a political position that nothing may be out of bounds for facebook. Facebook must be everywhere, everything must be on facebook and that must be acheived at all costs. It's an obviously morally repugnant position, but nonetheless, it's not being challenged.

Agreed. They would only lose a fraction of the 0.5% anyway, since they would just run other ads in their place. This is all about Facebook controlling the political process.

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