Facebook introduces a ‘kill switch’ for political advertising in the US. Over the past five years we’ve seen a massive increase in the level of political advertising through digital platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Google. Alongside legitimate campaigning, thanks to a lack of oversight, it’s also become the perfect place to seed disinformation and manipulate […]
There are good ways of regulating political ads and there are bad ways of regulating political ads.
We need sensible ideas that allow campaigns to reach voters with ideas, while preventing abuse.
This post sets out ten ideas that, if implemented by governments and platforms, would improve trust and transparency.
A while back we published ‘10 ideas for regulating political ads’ (which you might want to read before you read this). One idea that some argue for that we don’t agree with is having a regulator fact check them. In the heat of an election campaign, we don’t think it’s sustainable or desirable for a […]
Transparency as it stands is insufficient as a global response. Different conditions demand different solutions, so we therefore propose two further layers transparency, one radically transparent, the other almost opaque, to sit alongside the existing, emerging transparency we see today. The two layers we outline below are new, and serve to fix weaknesses in the ideas defined by the companies so far.
The Conservatives “Support the Deal” Brexit ads On 29th November, the Conservatives launched 152 ads about Brexit. They are promoting seven different videos, each with a slightly different angle on the proposed deal. All have the same call to action – for people to visit https://www.backthebrexitdeal.com and email their MP, asking them to support the Prime Minister’s […]
Some things that have been bubbling along for a while moved forward last week. First, Facebook and Twitter launched new ad transparency initiatives. You can now view the ads that accounts are running. ‘Dark ads’ are dead. Neither implementation is perfect. Discovery is still hard (you don’t know what you’re looking for, particularly for campaigns […]
Technology and data are changing the way elections work, but there’s not enough debate on the part of campaigns and their consultants about whether the new techniques they’re adopting are a good thing for democracy. I was at a conference for political consultants last week. Those present worked on polling and political messaging all over […]
(If you’re interested in political ads, why not install our browser extension, which helps you understand more about how campaigns use them) One of the questions we often get asked is how much is spent on ads in political campaigns. In the UK, political parties must report a breakdown of their expenditure. It’s therefore possible […]
Although it’s certainly true that all of the parties in Germany are using targeting ahead of election day tomorrow, an analysis of messaging from Germany’s nationalist right wing party, Alternative für Deutschland reveals one of the clearest examples we’ve collected of audience segmentation. Who Targets Me has worked closely with journalists from Buzzfeed DE and T-Online […]
Constituencies with users: 646 out of 650 Average users per constituency: 16.1 Number of users: 10,441 Just one day of campaigning left, and we’ve cracked the 10,000 user mark. Mid Ulster, Stockton North, Vale of Clwyd and Dudly North are the only constituencies without anyone using WhoTargets.Me. This level of coverage will mean that statistical analysis […]