Zuckerberg called Trump to congratulate him on beating Hillary with its "innovative" use of Facebook ads. Internally, Facebook cheered the "imaginative" use of the platform to sway voters. "Facebook loved us during the campaign", says campaign director. buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanma…
Facebook made $44 million on the Trump campaign between June and November 2016. As a high-spender, the Trump campaign had Facebook operatives "[provide] advice on best practices including insights on which ad formats were generating the best performance results". What a result!
"Trump used Facebook as Facebook was meant to be used", as one former Facebook employee puts it. Facebook: An exceptional tool for honing and distributing the most divisive messages that resonate with the the most base human instincts and insecurities. Score!
So Facebook provided both the most susceptible candidates for targeting via Cambridge Analytica, then helped the Trump campaign take political A/B testing to new heights to convert the targets. No wonder Zuckerberg and Facebook is fumbling for words.
Imagine working at Facebook right now. To know that you were an accomplice to building and maintaining this formidable death star of a psyops weapon. The compartmentalization needed to cope with that guilt and go to work in the morning must be immense.
