“While internet advertising is incredibly powerful and very effective for commercial advertisers,” Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said last month in announcing a complete ban on political advertising for candidates or issues, “that power brings significant risks to politics, where it can be used to influence votes to affect the lives of millions.”
But is it the risk to “the lives of millions” that is at issue here?
Really?
Pressure for social media companies to police “renegade” voices came mainly from the left … in Congress and major media. These are the groups with the most to lose by the free flow of political debate, as spurred by paid political advertising, which is what challengers often use to break through the incumbents’ natural advantage.
Congress is filled with incumbents, by definition.
Major media sees itself as gatekeeper for political discourse, and feels threatened by an unregulated online culture.
Accordingly, Twitter’s ban received rave reviews from the political left. “Good call,” progressive Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responded. A spokesperson for former Vice-President Joe Biden’s campaign called it “encouraging.”*
“Good,” tweeted Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (also sort of a presidential candidate). “Your turn, Facebook.”
But Facebook is thankfully not bending to pressure.
“[I]f Facebook were to cut off political ads, it could end up undercutting the scrappy, first-time candidates …,” reports The Washington Post. “Voters are more likely to see Facebook ads than television ads from challengers, according to the findings, published in a working paper whose first author is Erika Franklin Fowler of Wesleyan University.”
“Online advertising lowers the cost and the barriers to entry,” Fowler told The Washington Post.
Which is bad for the political establishment because it is good for challengers, the outsiders.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Perhaps the ban encourages top Democrats for the same reason the president’s campaign manager sounded the alarm: “This is yet another attempt to silence conservatives since Twitter knows President Trump has the most sophisticated online program ever known.”
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5 replies on “The Silence Option”
“Accordingly, Twitter’s ban received rave reviews from the political left.”
Presumably if that was the case, you’d have cited the reactions of some actual leftists instead of three Democratic Party (in other words, center-right) politicians.
Of course I agree with your view. I don’t need the main stream media, or hosts for social media, filtering what I read. Contrary to their egotistical view, I’m capable of sorting the rat turds from the coffee beans when I read opinions expressed by others.
Facebook won’t cut off political ads but it has no problem banning people it considers ‘dangerous’ or whose political views it deems ‘hate speech’.
It has no problem silencing individuals, prominent or otherwise, but turn its back on those who come to it with ad revenue? NEVER!!!!
Color me unimpressed. Facebook is not a platform for free speech anymore, if it ever was in the first place.
I am shadow-banned from Facebook but I have to hire special help to rid myself of the spybots that were left on my computer, after taking down my site.
Not uncommon to have my comment deemed ” not to our standards”..