
Zuckerberg defends political ads that will be 0.5% of 2020 revenue - notlukesky
https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/30/zuckerberg-political-ads/
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tompic823
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.

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ossworkerrights
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.

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ahartmetz
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.

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matttproud
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.

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dTal
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.

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Traster
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.

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pryffwyd
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.

