"At the end of October, Twitter announced that it was banning political advertisements. The announcement came after its bigger rival Facebook ruled out the possibility of banning political ads on its own social network."
"But not only did Facebook refuse to ban political ads, it also refused to subject such ads to fact-checking, something which critics said was necessary in view of the often deceptive nature of posts from political sources."
"Well, this controversial policy appears to have had the desired effect, as the incumbent Conservative government celebrated a "crushing" victory in Thursday's U.K. general election."
"It gained 365 seats in Parliament compared to the Labour Party's 203...while Prime Minister Boris Johnson claimed that result gave his administration a "stonking mandate" for Brexit, the victory may not simply have been a result of electorate's desire for a swift exit from EU."
"According to research from fact-checking non-profit First Draft, 88% of the Facebook ads the Conservatives posted in the first four days of December were deemed misleading by Full Fact, one of the U.K.’s biggest fact-checking organisations."
"By contrast, First Draft said that it couldn’t identify any specific Labour Facebook ads as misleading or false, although the party paid for fewer posts than its rivals."
"In other words, the Conservatives' social media election strategy involved subjecting hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of voters to false ad after false ad."
"Perhaps voters were swayed more by the desire to progress with Brexit when casting their votes, but the simple fact that the Conservatives paid for these “post-truth” ads indicates that the party believed they would have a tangible effect. If not, then why pay for them?"
"Zuckerberg is on record defending his company's political ads policy, having argued in recent weeks that "People should be able to see for themselves what politicians are saying.""
Marketers fully understand the psychological impact and influential persuasion of ADVERTISING!!
"At best this is a naive take on the issue, while at worst it's downright cynical and dangerous. It's wrong to assume or believe that the general public will simply look at misleading or false ads and quickly realise that they and the people who wrote them are lying."
"Because once again, the fact that certain political parties pay for thousands of untruthful ads indicates that such parties truly believe that much of the public will believe the lies said ads peddle."
"They do not think, "Let's allow people to see what misleading statements and lies we're propagating." No, they think, "Let's lie to the public and hope our lies convince the public to vote for us.""
"Studies support the notion that Facebook ads are persuasive. A 2018 paper published by researchers at University of Warwick found that, in the context of the 2016 presidential election, Facebook ads "had a significant effect in persuading undecided voters to support Mr Trump,"
"...and in persuading Republican supporters to turn out on polling day." More specifically, it found that "neutral voters who access Facebook on a daily basis are up to twice more likely to support Republican candidates than neutral voters who do not have a Facebook account.""
"So, not only were the vast majority of the Conservative Party ads misleading, but they were also likely persuasive, as indicated by yet more research from 2018 which concluded that Facebook ads increased the number of Trump voters in 2016 by 10%."
"It's arguable that right-wing’s greater attraction to falsity is a trend Zuckerberg is happy to profit from & facilitate. That's because it's left-wing parties, candidates and intellectuals that are threatening to regulate Facebook, tax it, break it up, or even nationalize it."
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.