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from the browse-with-circularly-polarized-glasses dept.
How Facebook's Political Ad System Is Designed to Polarize
Amid the tense debate over online political advertising, it may seem strange to worry that Facebook gives campaigns too little control over whom their ads target. Yet that's the implication of a study released this week by a team of researchers at Northeastern University, the University of Southern California, and the progressive nonprofit Upturn. By moonlighting as political advertisers, they found that Facebook's algorithms make it harder and more expensive for a campaign to get its message in front of users who don't already agree with them—even if they're trying to.
[...] The paper, still in draft form, is a follow-up to research the group did earlier this year, which found that Facebook's algorithms can dramatically skew the delivery of ads along racial and gender lines even when the advertiser doesn't intend it. That's because while Facebook allows advertisers to design their audience—that's ad targeting—the platform's algorithms then influence who within the audience actually sees the ad, and at what price. That's ad delivery. Because Facebook wants users to see ads that are "relevant" to them, the algorithm essentially pushes a given ad toward users it thinks are most likely already interested in its message. This, the researchers found, can reinforce stereotypes. For example, of the users who saw ads for jobs in the lumber business, 90 percent were male, even though the intended audience was evenly split between men and women. (Facebook is also facing litigation for allegedly allowing advertisers to intentionally discriminate.)
For the new study, the team decided to explore whether the algorithm also skews political ad delivery along partisan lines. Because the company doesn't share that information, they had to run a number of experiments, essentially going undercover to figure out where targeting ends and Facebook's algorithms begin.
[...] What seemed to most bother the political strategists I spoke with was not so much the existence of that machinery as its invisibility. In one of the cleverest twists of the experiment, the researchers created a neutral voter registration ad that secretly served code to make Facebook think it directed to one of the campaign's sites. In other words, to users, the ad was completely neutral, but Facebook had been tricked into thinking it was partisan. Lo and behold, the skew was still there—and it could only have come from Facebook's end. And, significantly, it would indicate that the algorithm was determining the ad's relevance not by the content, but purely by who it thought was behind it.
"This ultimately comes down to a lack of honesty and transparency on the part of Facebook—and that is toxic for our democracy," said Betsy Hoover, a former campaign strategist and the cofounder of the progressive tech incubator Higher Ground Labs, in an email. If the platform is pre-judging which voters should hear from which candidates, regardless of the message, it could be locking campaigns into filter bubbles they aren't even aware of.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Tuesday December 17 2019, @01:16PM (3 children)
How Facebook is catalyzing a civil war in the United States
Is how it should read. You can see the marching orders of the propaganda camps now, the reds(ironically the same people who used to hate The Reds...) are being told march straight ahead against the liberal bolscheviks(or whatever new term they are shoehorning in for their needs today) and the 'blue church' (of people who ironically support separation of church and state) are being told correctly that Trumpco might try to take complete power over the other 2 branches.
The republicans are running the Fabian, death by a thousand razors strategy, on top of their twenty other strategies over the last 50 years to drive the country to crisis.
I now believe the elites behind FB and cambridge analytica now would like to see all of the most difficult people to manage in the united states have a nice big civil war after which the country can be divided and plundered for good, and the pesky idea of a bill of rights(and 9/11 truth) can be done away with forever.
And along with it 90% of the public interest sector of the entire world.
The people running the ads know exactly what they are doing. Now that anyone with any critical thinking ability whatsoever has left the platforms, propagandists are just preaching to a choir of rubes and then sitting back and watching the flames.
https://archive.is/o3lM9 [archive.is]
https://archive.is/xXs6r [archive.is]
https://archive.is/wZMMJ [archive.is]
https://archive.is/N15xT [archive.is]
https://archive.is/FMvgZ [archive.is]
https://archive.is/5LJ82 [archive.is]
https://archive.is/HTALt [archive.is]
https://archive.is/Eu1Z4 [archive.is]
https://archive.is/TmRS6 [archive.is]
https://archive.ph/T95pm [archive.ph]
I for one would like to see some real chuck norris bruce willis shit from the people actually paid to defend the country, they can't all be chumps. Right?
Right? Or am I the only one who watched Invasion USA on vhs in the 80s so only I recognize what the fuck is going on?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 17 2019, @06:28PM (2 children)
WTF is this?
"I need to know why and under what law I am under permanent investigation, and these tactics need to be made public otherwise the existence of public culture, at all, is no longer tenable and we live under totalitarianism.
-multiple encounters with unaccompanied children loitering near my apartment"
-bank error where my paycheck was 2 weeks late, only affected me"
-coworker’s garden vandalized
-company I work for hit with ransomware
-came home to door not being locked
-pizza misdelivered to my room while writing about epstein with anon account over vpn
-bizarre issues with fedora and os x
-multiple encounters with unaccompanied children loitering near my apartment timed to coincide with my arrival or departure"
I love the "encountered children" part of suspicious activity.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 17 2019, @08:22PM
We're supposed to be gaslighting this guy and making his life a living hell *without* giving him any *real* enemy to push back against.
I know you were at last week's staff meeting where we discussed this.
Letting him run with his paranoia is part of the plan. When you make fun of him for it, you give it less weight.
I'm going to talk with Izaak about your Chanukkah bonus. You won't be getting one.
Straighten up, we have this chump right where we want him and you're not helping!
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Wednesday December 18 2019, @06:08PM
lol pretty obvious JTRIG tactics here, glad to see someone is reading and that this is the best you've got.