Mark Zuckerberg. Andrew Feinberg/Flickr. Some rights reserved.The big question in any general election is which party will win. Not this time: it’s going to be the Tories. Any other outcome will be be the result of events so unpredictable that they aren’t worth speculating about. What is contested in this election is the political landscape in which the next one will take place, in which one prize that might be up for grabs is getting Facebook to do something about disclosing political ad spending (see wise @steiny on the same cause here).
In the UK parties cannot buy TV advertising, instead TV stations are obliged schedule – at no cost – party political broadcasts. Billboard advertising and the like is at least public – we can see what messages parties are using. Facebook has no such civic niceties. We simply have no idea what party political message is being targeted to whom through Facebook ads, and journalists seem indifferent. Dominic Cummings, who ran the Vote Leave campaign in the Brexit referendum says: "there was not a single report anywhere (and very little curiosity) on how the official Vote Leave campaign spent 98% of its marketing budget. There was a lot of coverage of a few tactical posters." Vote Leave spent 98% of its budget on Facebook.
Vote Leave spent 98% of its budget on Facebook.
