Facebook Profits by Disrupting Our Democracy

In September 2019 Facebook announced that it will stop fact-checking political ads, and the backlash has been swift and widespread. Harsh criticism has been leveled against Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook by journalists, presidential candidates, Nancy Pelosi, and even Luke Skywalker.

Mark Zuckerberg defended his decision by claiming Facebook is a champion of “free expression,” but this is theatre of the absurd. Instead of freedom of speech, what Facebook really supports is freedom of reach: any advertiser, political operative, government or other entity can pay Facebook to reach and manipulate a target or group of targets. As we saw during the 2016 U.S. election, the Brexit referendum, and in other elections worldwide, it is all too easy for Russia and other bad actors to use Facebook and the other social media giants to interfere in our democratic elections — and all signs point to this happening again in 2020.

Seen by many as a direct rebuke to Facebook, Twitter announced in October 2019 that it will ban all political ads on its platform. In November 2019, Google announced it will limit political ads that target people based on their inferred interests from their search or web browsing histories. As the pressure on Facebook has mounted, it’s been reported that even Facebook is now weighing implementing some restrictions on highly targeted political ads.

These restrictions miss the point. Data harvesting and targeted ads of any kind by web/social media companies are the real threat to democracies worldwide. The recent policy changes by these companies are merely superficial efforts calculated to garner positive PR, while doing little damage to their bottom lines. They will continue to cause severe damage to our democracies because they have only one objective: increasing profits — and there are plenty of profits to be had. According to the consulting firm Borrell Associates Inc., the total spending on digital political ads in the U.S. is expected to reach $2.9 billion in 2020, up from $1.4 billion in 2016.

If these companies were truly interested in securing our elections and democracies, they would put an end to data harvesting and targeted ads altogether. They won’t do that, of course, because that would mean upending their entire business model. These giants all employ the business model known as surveillance capitalism, in which they collect our personal data and then share/sell it to advertisers, political operatives, governments and other entities who use it to covertly manipulate our decisions to their own benefit. As long as these companies continue to engage in surveillance capitalism, democratic societies worldwide are in danger.

Even Twitter, which has gone the furthest by banning all “political” ads, has done nothing to address the core problem. Russia and other bad actors routinely use social media to sow discord, spread disinformation and exacerbate divisiveness in democratic societies, often without referencing any particular political candidates or legislation.

Twitter’s new policy changes also do nothing to address the algorithmic newsfeed manipulation used by Twitter, Facebook and all of the current mainstream social giants, which is yet another tool in election meddlers’ toolkit. The social media giants all have business models built on advertising, and they manipulate the newsfeeds of their users in order to increase engagement because that earns them more money from advertisers. The content that is most outrageous and polarizing gets artificially boosted and grows the most widespread on these social networks. Election meddlers have been shown to take advantage of this system by creating bot armies that comment on and share “organic” divisive political posts en masse, gaming the algorithms of these social networks in order to amplify these posts and reach millions of people without creating actual “ads.”

Until Facebook, Google, Twitter and the other current web/social media giants end their practice of surveillance capitalism and newsfeed manipulation, the problem of election meddling by bad actors will not go away. It will only grow more pervasive.

What to do? Move to MeWe!

The solution is a social network with no third-party advertising — that means no political ads, and no ads of any kind. MeWe is the uplifting social network with millions of members worldwide, all the features people love, and a Privacy Bill of Rights. There are No Ads, No Targeting, and No Newsfeed Manipulation, so election meddlers, authoritarians and marketing entities cannot target or boost any content to any MeWe members.

MeWe has no political bias — left and right all enjoy the platform, and MeWe’s TOS restricts bad elements while allowing free speech. For example, progressive activist/author Amy Siskind, like many others, has been posting on her Twitter and her Facebook encouraging her followers to #DeleteFacebook and move to MeWe.

It’s time to fight back against election interference on social media. Leave Facebook and the other democracy-disrupting social media giants behind and join MeWe!

Mark Weinstein is a world-renowned privacy expert and the CEO of MeWe, the award-winning social network with a Privacy Bill of Rights and the №1 Trending Social Site.

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