"While internet advertising is incredibly powerful and very effective for commercial advertisers, that power brings significant risks to politics, where it can be used to influence votes to affect the lives of millions.
Internet political ads present entirely new challenges to civic discourse: machine learning-based optimization of messaging and micro-targeting, unchecked misleading information, and deep fakes. All at increasing velocity, sophistication, and overwhelming scale."
https://twitter.com/jack/status/1189634360472829952
But if modern targeted advertising is powerful enough to be dangerous in politics, why is that technology not also dangerous in the hands of commercial advertisers? It seems like it would be equally dangerous in either hands. If anything, it seems like commercial actors would be less likely to be benevolent and more likely to have the resources to use the technology even more effectively.
Maybe that's wrong though (and maybe there are reasons why there is a distinction), but it is something I keep finding myself thinking about.