The Algorithm for Divisiveness at Facebook
Facebook is accused of inciting divisiveness in the 2016 election. Why is this still relevant in 2022? They are accused of still doing it.
A Facebook executive who backed Hillary Clinton's 2016 election campaign told colleagues in an internal memo last month that the platform could ultimately be responsible for President Trump's reelection (a). In the memo, Facebook VP Andrew Bosworth wrote that the Trump campaign's use of Facebook's advertising tools were responsible for Trump's win in the 2016 presidential election. The company's political advertising platform, he added, could result in the same for the 2020 election. He acknowledged being a liberal but that he could not intervene. Facebook has the responsibility to stay out of politics, he said.
Bosworth proposed that digital advertising like on Facebook was the reason for Trump's election (2). Brad Parscale was the digital campaign manager for the campaign and he made pioneering decisions to bombard Facebook users with 'tens of thousands of versions of ads per day'. But were the ads unethical? The Trump campaign claimed - and Bosworth agreed - that the ads did not include misinformation or hoaxes. Bosworth called this 'microtargeting' or small markets, which is using data mining from user characteristics and preferences in order to show them ads that particularly speak to their needs and wants.
Deepfakes, or manipulated images that are expertly altered so they are hard to diagnose as not real, are accused to have been used bin the 2020 campaign, including one video on Twitter and pro-Trump Facebook accounts that portrayed a Biden as having twitches and other odd mannerisms (3).
So what are social media companies doing about this? Further, what are companies that want to target customers doing? Have they learned, in fact, that it works and does not have to be unethical?
Nonprofits have found micro-targeting to be advantageous to raising awareness and donations, according to 2020 research (4). Companies now routinely embrace data mining to post the advertisements that particularly apply to your past searches. However, 2021 researchers have also stated that, "If Facebook employed a business model focused on efficiently providing accurate information and diverse views, rather than addicting users to highly engaging content within an echo chamber, the algorithmic outcomes would be very different" (5).
A former Facebook artificial intelligence (AI) researcher agrees. He said the company ran numerous studies that concluded exploiting divisiveness, aggravating polarization, and particularly engage political conservatives (6). As of 2022, Google, Twitter and Facebook all say that they have deleted thousands of accounts and posts that have questionable and inciting content. Twitter had already banned political advertisements.
Topics
Ethics, Leadership Development, Leadership Skills, Retention, Commitment
Student Discussion/Assignment
Ethics. The main theme here is ethics, which can be applied to many areas of business. Should companies use micro-targeting? It is well-accepted as a form of advertising using data mining. How should they use it and should they have explicit policies?
Leadership. Following up on (1), how can leaders 'push down' ethics of analytics used in micro-targeting? Should managers be trained? Receive leadership workshopping? How can it be filtered down? Role modeling, explicit policies...employees could be involved, perhaps.
Hiring, Retention, Commitment. Could organizations use such policies and stances to attract and retain employees?
References