
Political Reality: Buy Ads on Facebook or Risk Losing the Election - dsgerard
https://www.wsj.com/articles/political-reality-buy-ads-on-facebook-or-risk-losing-the-election-1541171620
======
cm2012
This is basically saying: Show your message to lots of people or risk losing
the election. Which has always been true.

Example: Say your platform is legalizing widgets. You really believe this is
going to improve the country, whenever you talk to people in person they
agree, and the science agrees with you.

There are 350 million people in the country and you can't knock on every door
yourself.

You can:

1) Hope Word of Mouth gets out about how good your policy is. But the vast
majority of americans don't care about policy to seek it out, and you'll only
find so many true believers who are going to IRL spam their friends for you.

2) Get really good at PR so people hear about you. But no one wants to hear
about your widgets, so if news shows air it their ratings go down, so they
won't air it. So you'll have to get in the news based on other BS you insert
yourself into. People also segment themselves now into thousands of news
sources now, so you can't reach everyone through the same news either.

3) Pay to get in front of people where they are already paying attention (TV
and FB ads). This means you can give your most compelling in person argument
to people, and they're at least forced to see it or listen for a few seconds.
This way, you might actually change a few minds en masse.

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gersh
I find it kind of ironic to see the WSJ essentially publish an ad for Facebook
disguised as an article. Still, it is probably true to some extent.

Is Facebook just a fancy machine for auctioning off the electorate to the
highest bidder? Should we think of as the means of modern slavery?

~~~
crazy1van
>Is Facebook just a fancy machine for auctioning off the electorate to the
highest bidder?

Doesn’t the 2016 presidential election disprove this? The candidate who spent
the most lost the election.

~~~
gotocake
Although that candidate did get a few million more votes. I’m not trying to
make some bitter comment, just that if you consider Facebook as selling votes,
the highest spender did get the most.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
One important factoid that goes against this view is that Clinton's margin of
victory in California was substantially greater than her _entire_ margin of
victory in the popular vote. The reason I mention this is because you spend
where you need to spend. California was never even remotely in contention and
so it's safe to say that Clinton was not spending to try to win by millions in
California. In other words, it's unlikely that her spending produced the votes
she was trying to 'buy'.

~~~
gotocake
That’s roughly in line with Obama’s last election in which he won CA by about
3 million votes. In the 2008 election the margin was about the same. Clinton
won CA by 4 million popular votes, so I doubt the total of her 3 million
excess can be explained there. It’s also, if you’ll forgive my pedantry, a
fact _oid_ rather than a fact because even in states she lost you have to
consider how much more she would have lost by without the ad spend. We don’t
have access to the information that would allow us to make thst determination.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
I agree with you, but I don't see how this goes against what I'm saying? In
2008 Obama won California by 3 million. He won in the rest of the nation,
excluding California, by 7 million. In 2016 Clinton won in California by 4
million. She lost in the rest of the country, excluding California, by a
million. I completely agree that without excessive spending her margin of
defeat, outside of California, would likely have been greater. But this also
shows that the spending alone does not, in current times, map strongly to
votes.

And I hope this will continue to be a thing. In my opinion, people are
overestimating the significance of the centralized internet forces, such as
Facebook, and discounting the significance of decentralized internet forces -
such as discussions perhaps not dissimilar to the one you and I are sharing.
There's no doubt that advertising has a significant effect, but I think it's
perhaps less than ever before largely because people half way around the world
from one another can chat and have far more relevant conversations than any
sort of _' Hi, I'm Bob. My opponent's an asshole. Vote for me!'_ piece, or
even the more refined. ' _Hi, I 'm Bob. My meta-analytics indicate that you
like broccoli. Omg, I do too. My opponent doesn't. He hates broccoli and all
it stands for. Also, he's an asshole, like anybody who wouldn't like broccoli
amirite!? Vote for me!_'

Even outside of the presidential consider things like Sanders. Yes at some
point he was competitive in fund raising, but his success was not because of
the fund raising. Rather his fund raising came as an effect, rather than a
cause, of his success. And again that success was something that was driven by
the decentralized and oft difficult to predict, let alone control, forces of
internet communication.

------
prolikewh0a
Why is this an allowed form of propaganda but other things aren't? If you take
a step back out of the US "two" party system, it's just Facebook propping up
the status quo. Why are Republicans and Democrats allowed to advertise their
shitty ideas but others can't?

~~~
azernik
What do you mean by "others can't"?

~~~
prolikewh0a
>Facebook said this amounted to the most domestic pages and accounts it had
ever removed related to influence campaigns.

They don't want some things even if they're operated __domestically by
Americans __, but it looks like per OP, they 're fine with people/political
PAC's/Political Parties buying literal 'influence campaigns' for ideas that
prop up the status quo.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/11/technology/fake-news-
onli...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/11/technology/fake-news-online-
disinformation.html?module=inline)

~~~
azernik
For violating rules about _false_ information.

~~~
prolikewh0a
Why does Facebook get to tell me what's false and not? I'm an adult, I can
handle it and research validity myself. Why is it making decisions to what I
can and can't see? It's like they're the thought police.

Why aren't they removing all pseudoscience in this case? Why not astrology,
why not psychics, why not tarot card readers, why not people selling weight
loss drugs, why not people showing videos of 737's recovering from a barrel
roll on short final, why not homeopathy, hell why not literally all religion?

------
mylons
hot take: facebook should not legally be allowed to show political ads in any
country.

~~~
dane-pgp
Just facebook or all social media platforms? All online platforms? All forms
of media?

Perhaps a clearer approach is to only allow political advertising to be bought
using money given by citizens (and limiting the amount each citizen can
contribute in each election).

In the case of the US political system, this would probably require an
amendment to the constitution, but such an idea is being seriously proposed:

[https://campaignfinancereform.org/amendment](https://campaignfinancereform.org/amendment)

~~~
TangoTrotFox
I think this sort of ideal is more likely to reward than punish bad actors.
I'm certain you can think of a million and one ways
companies/PACs/individuals/etc could influence others in ways that would be
difficult, if not impossible, to trace back to them. The player that tries to
play by the rules and ensures that all of their messaging on the up and up is
simply going to get burnt.

The wisest form of regulation is to assume bad actors from step 1 and try to
create systems where the bad actors are encouraged to abide the rules, not out
of threats, but because it benefits them in some way. For instance, the EU are
aiming to force Netflix (and similar operations) to have 30% of their
catalogue sourced from local productions... or else. It's not tough to predict
the result. They'll license the premium stuff (which they probably already
have) and then just stuff the rest with filler to hit the minimum.

Imagine if instead that Netflix and other companies received a tax deduction
which was proportional to the percent of time their customers spent consuming
locally sourced material. Now suddenly there is a positive incentive for the
good behavior, and Netflix would almost certainly be going out of their way to
try to get you to watch locally sourced material. On the other hand people
often want to have their cake, and eat it too.

~~~
civilitty
_> I think this sort of ideal is more likely to reward than punish bad actors.
I'm certain you can think of a million and one ways
companies/PACs/individuals/etc could influence others in ways that would be
difficult, if not impossible, to trace back to them. The player that tries to
play by the rules and ensures that all of their messaging on the up and up is
simply going to get burnt._

So instead we let all of the players become bad actors without consequence?

 _> Imagine if instead that Netflix and other companies received a tax
deduction which was proportional to the percent of time their customers spent
consuming locally sourced material. Now suddenly there is a positive incentive
for the good behavior, and Netflix would almost certainly be going out of
their way to try to get you to watch locally sourced material. On the other
hand people often want to have their cake, and eat it too._

And then reward the bad actors for being bad actors in the first place by
depriving society of the taxes they owe?

I think it's safe to assume that the politicians making those deals will be
often be bad actors too, and courts rarely let cities and other governments
back out of those deals just because the deal makers were corrupt.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
You're straw manning. The point is you need to consider reality before trying
to decide how to tackle problems. Your regulations are not only not going to
levy any consequences to bad actors, it's going to directly reward their bad
behavior. They're the ones that are going to be able to capably break the law,
and work to minimize consequences in any case where they're caught. But the
law will severely hamper good actors that try to abide it. I think you realize
this which is why you're now resorting to _' Well, so we just them all get
away with this without consequence!?'_ And the answer there that when doing
'something' is less effective than doing nothing, you don't have any choice.
To do otherwise is simply cutting off your nose to spite your face.

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TACIXAT
I'm tinkering with paid acquisition right now and it's not very valuable.
There are a lot of impressions but very few clicks. I think that is like a lot
of Facebook though, people read the article headline but don't open it. The
same goes for ads, people see the message but do not really care about the
content. It is perfect for political messaging, get your snippet out there,
make your impression, get in their head for election day.

~~~
soared
You are doing it wrong.

Digital marketing makes it very easy to waste money. Sometimes people throw
money at Facebook (everyone is doing Facebook!) when it’s the wrong channel
for your business. Sometime you miss a tiny checkbox that makes most of your
budget get spent outside of facebook.

No matter what your goal is, there is an effective way to buy traffic
(advertise). There is a reason advertising agencies exist - they are good at
their jobs.

~~~
TACIXAT
I agree, what I am saying is that Facebook feels like the right channel for
information dissemination, not necessarily for driving traffic outside of
Facebook. The paid acquisition I am trying is on Facebook, sorry if that
wasn't clear. I have ideas for other channels that will drive a lot more
traffic (and is stuff I'm a lot better at).

------
deytempo
Kind of like pay for ads on Google or don’t be an internet facing business.
This is how you determine if a company has a monopoly: if it is practically
impossible to play the game without including that one entity in your business
plans marketing model

------
malvosenior
Non-paywalled version:
[https://outline.com/5T5s6n](https://outline.com/5T5s6n)

Honestly, I don't understand the point of this article. It says Facebook is
probably influential (provides no data), says something about data leaks
(doesn't tie into the thesis of the piece) and says that Democrats outspend
Republicans 3-1 on FB ads (guess we'll see if that's successful on Weds).

It amazes me that so much ink is spilled over Facebook ads. It really seems
like scapegoating from people who's candidate lost as I have serious doubts
that FB advertising is effective _at all_ and no data pointing to that
conclusion is ever demonstrated.

I know a lot of people here have experience with digital advertising (as do
I); it's basically a scam. It's not effective and it's certainly not turning
any elections around.

------
starbeast
So, what happens when you have multiple Hari Seldons, each with a different
set of ideas?

------
deytempo
The government could seize Facebook anytime they wish so the fact they don’t
leads one to conclude that either Facebook controls the government, the
government controls Facebook, or Facebook is not worth seizing

