> 4 isn't right (anymore) because they made all political ads available to anyone who wants to see them.
I think #4 is still valid:
1. Facebook may not be to correctly identify political ads vs other ads.
2. Their Ad Library seems to be missing important information [1].
3. A disclosure like the Ad Library still obscures influence campaigns by greatly reducing the ability of watchdogs to passively monitor the political discourse. Instead they have expend much more manpower to actively monitor the library with the right search terms, and if they fail to do that they'll miss things.
> Facebook has launched an archive of American political ads, which the company says is an alternative to ProPublica’s tool. However, Facebook’s ad archive is only available in three countries, fails to disclose important targeting data and doesn’t even include all political ads run in the U.S.
> Our tool regularly caught political ads that aren’t reflected in Facebook’s archive. Just this month, we noticed four groups running ads that haven’t been in Facebook’s archive:
It was happening, but it was done by people from political parties visiting those voters in person at their doorsteps (I know of it from documentaries), obviously way more expensive and time consuming than ads, and ineffective when done in a foreign accent or language or without other means of identification/verification, so people outside the US had it a lot harder to influence those voters.
> Without Facebook, this wasn’t already happening.
This double negative is a bit confusing. Targeted political messaging absolutely was a thing before Facebook and even the internet. Correlate info on zip code demographics, the readership demographics of different publications and media outlets and one can provide messages that target specific groups.
If you accept the premise of #1 and #2, #3 may simply be analogous to how money laundering was possible before bitcoin, but now it's easier/cheaper and harder to trace.
So the argument could be said they disrupted that black market but are a publicly listed company.
Facebook's ad model is built to reward "virality" - meaning being over the top and salacious means lower costs. Even Boz acknowledges that was part of the Trump team's genius - they used the platform, as it was built, perfectly. The Democrats naturally have equal access to this platform, so I don't think its as much a left-right thing, vs a crazy-calm divide.
The other thing is just disinformation / identity verification - making sure all advertisers are who they say they are (and you don't get russians posing as black lives matter, etc.)
1. The US Presidential election is decided by a small percentage of voters who have an open mind and live in the right districts.
2. Facebook’s targeted advertising allows advertisers to efficiently buy the votes of these select voters.
3. Without Facebook, this wasn’t already happening.
Personally, I believe #1 is more or less indisputable, and I’m willing to believe #2. But I’m not so sure about #3.