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THE ASTORIAN • SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2020
Cheap online political ads ripe for misuse
By BARBARA ORTUTAY
and AMANDA SEITZ
Associated Press
Older men in Arkansas might see a close-up
photo of President Donald Trump pumping his
fi st in the air, along with a message asking them
to donate $30 to his campaign for a Super Bowl
commercial.
Middle-aged women in California might
see a photo of Trump pointing to a crowd, with
a plea for them to give “any amount” to the
campaign.
Before Election Day, politicians across
party lines are expected to spend more than
$1 billion to pelt voters with millions of these
cheap online ads, which can be tailored to a
voter’s most personal details — down to one
household or even a single individual.
Experts warn that this ad-targeting sys-
tem is still vulnerable to manipulation by for-
eign governments and domestic actors try-
ing to infl uence the election, just as they did
in 2016. Those attempts could become more
sophisticated this year as tech companies wres-
tle with a dysfunctional federal election watch-
dog agency and deploy haphazard safeguards
that still offer plenty of loopholes.
“There’s now so much money and atten-
tion spent online with so few rules that if you
wanted chaos, that’s the place to go for chaos,”
said David Karpf, a political communications
professor at The George Washington Univer-
sity. “And there’s a bunch of people who want
chaos.”
According to Facebook, Russia-connected
accounts spent about $100,000 on Facebook
ads during the 2016 presidential election. The
ads seemed to fan division on polarizing issues
such as gun control and race relations. That’s a
fraction of the cost of a single 30-second spot
on a major TV network.
But it was enough to stir up trouble. In
response, Google, Facebook and Twitter insti-
tuted verifi cation policies that require advertis-
ers to confi rm their identity using their orga-
nization’s tax identifi cation number or other
government ID. Twitter later banned all polit-
ical ads.
“Microtargeting” allowed the divisive mes-
sages to reach small pockets of voters in cer-
tain geographical locations based on their spe-
cifi c interests.
Google this month began limiting U.S.
advertisers’ ability to target political ads beyond
broad categories such as sex, age and postal
code. Facebook will continue to allow cam-
paigns to target voters for any reason, down to
their most personal interests.
Such targeting technology offers distinct
advantages.
A candidate running a TV spot might reach
a specifi c audience watching the show “The
Mary Altaff er/AP Photo
Before Election Day, politicians are expected to spend more than $1 billion to pelt voters with
millions of cheap online ads, which can be tailored to a voter’s most personal details — down
to one household or even a single individual.
‘THERE’S NOW SO MUCH MONEY AND
ATTENTION SPENT ONLINE WITH SO FEW RULES
THAT IF YOU WANTED CHAOS, THAT’S THE
PLACE TO GO FOR CHAOS.’
David Karpf | a political communications professor at The George Washington University
Real Housewives of Atlanta.” But on Face-
book that same candidate can run a specifi c ad
aimed at Atlanta housewives who lean moder-
ate, like to hunt and hold a master’s degree, for
instance.
In Texas, for example, Republican strategist
Chris Wilson said his polling found suburban
women were frustrated by red-light cameras,
so he targeted thousands of them on Face-
book with ads promising that his client GOP
Gov. Greg Abbott would abolish the cameras if
elected to a second term in 2018.
Abbott won and signed a law last summer
banning red-light cameras in the state. Wilson
argues that microtargeting helps to mobilize
voters around certain issues.
Google and Facebook have spent years col-
lecting troves of data that now help campaigns
persuade voters, said Luca Cian, a professor at
the Darden School of Business who focuses on
how marketing affects political campaigns.
“I can specify that one person in one specifi c
household should see a specifi c ad,” he said.
“And their neighbor could see a different ad.”
DEL’S O.K. TIRE
It’s not just campaigns running ads. With
the click of a button and a few hundred dollars,
ordinary people or businesses can now pur-
chase political ads that are directed at specifi c
groups of people to see.
The sheer volume of ads makes it nearly
impossible to track them.
“How does anybody even begin to try and
keep up and monitor tens of thousands ... or
maybe millions of ads?” asked Ellen Wein-
traub, chairwoman of the Federal Election
Commission, the taxpayer-funded watchdog
agency that creates and enforces rules for fed-
eral campaigns.
That’s a problem for journalists seeking to
hold politicians accountable and for opposing
candidates who might unwittingly be featured
in an attack ad by political rivals.
In nearly every type of race — from city
council candidates to the presidential elec-
tion — campaigns might struggle to spot false
claims running about their candidate online,
said Democratic campaign consultant Jared
Kamrass.
“If a negative ad is run against my candidate
on digital, I almost have no way of knowing
about it unless someone screenshots it,” Kam-
rass said.
But there is a fl ip side. The ads are helpful
for lesser-known candidates or smaller local
and statewide campaigns that can now spend
as little as $250 to reach hundreds or thousands
of voters online, he said.
Since the last presidential election, tech
companies have considered many questions:
Should they allow political ads at all? Fact-
check them? Catalog them in a public data-
base? Prevent them from being targeted to
small groups of people?
Some companies adopted their own rules
for political ads. Twitter, which made little
money off the ads, took the most radical step.
In November, CEO Jack Dorsey announced
the site would reject all political ads from its
platform worldwide.
The tech companies have been left to regu-
late themselves, in part, because the FEC has
been gridlocked for years over rules that would
be tailored to the booming online political ad
industry. The agency is without a full set of
leaders and does not have a quorum needed to
consider new rules for ads or to penalize cam-
paigns for violating the law.
“We end up in kind of the messy state we’re
in when your regulators stop regulating and
there’s a ton of money in the system,” Karpf
added. “Of course that’s going to end up going
haywire.”
Facebook has stuck to its plan of prohibit-
ing third-party fact checkers from rating polit-
ical ads as false, despite widespread criticism
from politicians such as Democratic presiden-
tial candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
The social network has acknowledged that
the tools aren’t perfect. Sarah Schiff, a Face-
book product manager, said the goal is to make
it “more diffi cult” for bad actors to misuse the
platform.
Even smaller platforms, including TikTok
and Pinterest, have been forced to confront the
issue by banning political ads entirely, as has
the Microsoft-owned LinkedIn. But none of
those rules is foolproof.
Experts say political campaigns, foreign
government and trolls will continue to push
the boundaries, testing to see which messages,
images or videos resonate with potential voters
based on their data.
“For democracy to work, you need a com-
mon reality, which means a common under-
standing of who’s saying what when,” said
Daniel G. Newman, the president of MapLight,
a nonprofi t that tracks political money, lobby-
ing and votes. “But when politicians are say-
ing different things to different audiences, even
thousands of different small audiences, there’s
an inability to hold them accountable.”
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