Advertisements and Election Meddling

Last November, Mark Zuckerberg famously dismissed accusations that Facebook affected the results of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election by allowing “fake news” on the platform in a lengthy, post-election essay.

A brief portion below (emphasis my own):

 “After the election, many people are asking whether fake news contributed to the result, and what our responsibility is to prevent fake news from spreading. These are very important questions and I care deeply about getting them right. I want to do my best to explain what we know here.

Of all the content on Facebook, more than 99% of what people see is authentic. Only a very small amount is fake news and hoaxes. The hoaxes that do exist are not limited to one partisan view, or even to politics. Overall, this makes it extremely unlikely hoaxes changed the outcome of this election in one direction or the other.

I wrote about this topic at length in my previous post, Facebook and Post-Truth.

Things have changed since November.

Facebook, Twitter, and Google will be appearing before Congress to testify on Russian interference in the election, revealing over 3000 Russian-paid political ads promoting ideologies across the spectrum.

Trump tweeted that Facebook has always had an anti-Trump bias:

Facebook was always anti-Trump.The Networks were always anti-Trump hence,Fake News, @nytimes(apologized) & @WaPo were anti-Trump. Collusion?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 27, 2017

(Though, he did not seem to mind this “bias” when he explicitly stated Facebook helped him win. *shrugs*)

Zuckerberg, countering Trump’s claim of bias, wrote another personal essay, stating his idealistic vision of the Facebook community:

Every day I work to bring people together and build a community for everyone. We hope to give all people a voice and create a platform for all ideas.

Trump says Facebook is against him. Liberals say we helped Trump. Both sides are upset about ideas and content they don’t like. That’s what running a platform for all ideas looks like.

I appreciate Zuckerberg’s insistance on maintaining Facebook’s universal appeal, but I question the humanity-focused motivations he desperately wishes to put forth. The world’s largest social media platform certainly has an interest in maintaining as many eye-balls as possible. The simple formula: more users + targeted ads = profit.

Facebook’s advertising algorithm has recently come under intense scrutiny, and for good reason. Independent news site ProPublica discovered hateful phrases like “Jew-hater” or “how to burn Jews” were easily promoted to almost 2,300 people.  Facebook-owned photo and video sharing app, Instagram, ran a Facebook ad featuring the phrase “I will rape you” after a user uploaded a screenshot of the harassing comment.

Clearly, advertising algorithms need some work.

But the problem isn’t with their function; their sole purpose is to put content in front of people who will connect to it. Facebook’s entire business model focuses on matching content with their users’ interests, almost too accurately, in ProPublica’s study.

I, personally, prefer to view headlines and ads that show me information I am already interested in. I am also aware of how quickly that innocent “preference” becomes an ideological bubble, a bubble in which advertisers can show increasingly specialized content in hopes I might “click here.”

Social networks do not have any real financial interest in serving up balanced ideological ads or articles. We pay for “free” services like Google and Facebook with our eyeballs and our clicks. Unless one intentionally seek out websites and people who hold different opinions than their own, what they see on their Newsfeed is not the full picture. The algorithms make sure of it.

Note: The night before I finished composing this piece, Mark Zuckerberg posted a brief apology to mark the final day of the Jewish holiday, Yom Kippur. Full quote below:

 

Facebook and Post-Truth

A few weeks ago, Donald J. Trump won the general presidential election here in the U.S.

According to BuzzFeed News, of the 20 most popular election stories between August and Election Day, fake news sites boasted over a million more engagements than real news sites on behemoth social media platform Facebook.

If any of you are like me, you probably saw and even clicked one or two such headlines in an effort to investigate. But let this truth sink in for a moment: more fake news was viewed before the election than factual news on Facebook.

Some are going so far as to claim that Facebook is at least partly to blame.

Enough criticism appeared online that Mark Zuckerberg himself shared his thoughts on the subject.

He provided a few metrics and talked about the problem of hoax content and Facebook’s mission to provide users with meaningful content. Of those metrics, the most important numbers are these: 2 million, “billions,” and >=99%.

2 million: the approximated number of people Facebook helped register to vote. That’s a lot of votes. If a little colorful banner helped a few folks to get out and vote, then more power to them all.

“Billions”: refers generally to the number of posts created and shared by Facebook users regarding the election. That’s a lot of posts.

>=99%: the percentage of posts on Facebook which can be considered accurate and authentic.

While this percentage doesn’t refer to specifically election-focused material, 1% of “billions” (3 billion, arbitrarily chosen for this example) is thirty million. That is a lot of fake posts.

In a recent episode of one of my favorite podcasts, Nilay Patel (Editor-in-chief of The Verge) and veteran tech journalist Walt Mossberg discussed this very issue. Patel very correctly noted that if any other major media company like Cox, Comcast or even The Verge admitted to <=1% of all stories being fake, these companies would almost immediately lose the trust and business of their audiences. (You can find the episode I refer to here. Their discussion starts at the 43:04 mark.)

Yet Facebook, since it does not claim to be a media company (despite a study showing that 62% of American adults get news from social media), continues to enjoy massive engagement.

I took to Facebook and Twitter to ask my friends and followers what they thought about whether the big social media sites have a responsibility to ensure accurate information and authentic sources.

On both platforms, the answer was a resounding “No.”

Many commenters on Facebook shared their opinion that it is the reader’s responsibility to think critically about what headlines they’re clicking and what sources their news comes from.

Technically, those commenters were correct. Facebook and Twitter are private companies with their own terms and conditions. They have no responsibility to police posts which do not violate their rules.

Standford University recently completed a study which examined middle school to college students’ ability to accurately assess the authenticity of a news source. Their results? “In every case and at every level, we were taken aback by students’ lack of preparation.” (Summary of the study here.) I find this to be shocking, yet believable.

With Stanford’s study in mind, it should not be surprising that Oxford Dictionary’s 2016 Word of the Year is ‘Post-truth.’

Their definition:

Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective  facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals  to emotion and personal belief.

It seems to me that we ought to return to demanding more objective fact-based news from our friends and news sources. I refuse to take this post-truth society lying down. I have taken to commenting on posts I know to be objectively false after some fact-checking and I expect my friends and family to do the same on my own posts.

The internet is a wonderful and powerful place. Let’s utilize our access to the world’s information and make our social media feeds a more truthful mode of connection.

LST Oigawa Japan 2015: Week 3

You see the title of this blog? Week 3. WEEK 3. We’re officially halfway through with our trip, and I sense God has even more in store for us than we’ve seen thus far.

I keep talking about the generosity of our friends here, but only because they keep surprising me with selfless acts and grace. Maybe God is trying to show me a new way to live. I know I definitely get caught up in the whole race for money/material possessions if I’m not careful.

The people we’ve been given the opportunity to love are some of the most beautiful people I know, both inside and out. I don’t want to let myself take a free pass on missing what God is trying to teach me through my time here with them.

Last week had a definitive theme; it came from Philippians 2. Paul writes:

“Do nothing from selfish ambition or vain conceit, but with humility of mind regard others as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.” Phil. 2: 3-4 (NASB)

Every reader we’ve had treats us like Paul describes. Most of them aren’t followers of Christ. Anyone who’s talked to me for more than five minutes knows that I struggle with “humility of mind.” It has been a constant point of conflict between me and God for most of my life, because I really like believing that I’m pretty awesome. It’s comfortable. It doesn’t seem to harm too many people, so why not? Right?

The point is, God is showcasing what humility looks like, and these people are so happy. I want what they’re having, and it’s all coming from this starting point of humility. It’s the only way to live.

I don’t want to miss that. I want to embrace it and live it out as much as I’m witnessing it being lived out by people I’ve known for less than a month.

Pray this week that I’ll stick to the journey I see God placing me on. Pray that I let Him guide me no matter the cost. Pray that my team can embrace humility, and receive an intimacy that only God can build.

As always, Zach’s post can be found here.

In Christ,

Jon.

LST Oigawa Japan 2015: Week 2

The unity of humanity is incredible to me. We like to get caught up in our factions/divisions/races/genders/[Enter groupthink candidate here], but in the end, there’s an inherent oneness to us all, if we only stop being selfish for long enough.

Today, Zach, Bailey, and I spent some time with a wonderful Japanese woman who took us to see two castles, an old military hall, and some touristy shops before treating us to sushi. We woke up to her knocking on our door, asking if we wanted to join her on the mostly spontaneous trip.

I was acutely aware of the language gap both between her and myself, and between the vast amounts of history and culture I was observing. During our descent from the second tower, I found myself thinking about unity.

To my right, there was a hand-painted (at least, I think) sign completely in one of the complicated (to my eyes) scripts of Japan. As I studied it, not a single stroke or character held any literal significance for me, but I felt something. This may sound weird, but I could feel my connection to the language, and to the history of the land simply because of my humanity. It was an wonderfully peaceful and happy moment.

As I considered the last week, I began to notice a trend with the unity thing. The people I’ve been reading and falling in love with are as human as me; we’re all striving for connection. Our differences are second to the ways in which we are the same. My conversations reflected this truth. Whether we’re discussing the minute details of what this word means versus that word, how the Jesus I call Savior could have possibly been both fully man and fully God, or why iced coffee is preferable to hot coffee. While unbelievable busy, this week has brought me a deep sense of peace and gratitude.

Our ministry has continued to grow, and we are praying God will continue to bring us more people to love. The first of many parties was a huge success, in spite of how unprepared we felt. I know God will continue to show up and move both in the hearts of our readers, and of our team.

Zach also posted an update for his blog, to check it out here!

Please keep us and our mission in your prayers. We wouldn’t be here without the grace of God, and He knows we need more of it every single day.

In Christ,

Jon

Online

I’m laying here my bed, writing this post from my fancy, somewhat new smartphone. My recently created twitter account (twitter.com/kingkangabob) is ablaze with tweets from the 60+ users I follow, and my facebook page is contantly humming with a variety of posts from my 700+ friends. Any one who spends time on the internet knows that the easier it is to get online from anywhere, the more dependant one becomes on the connection. Nevermind the fact that they probably couldn’t care less about 50% (roughly) of the content they see, it’s that feeling of “being online” that keeps those pale, dark, and foundation-covered faces stuck to a screen more often than not.

Look at it this way, you’re sitting/standing there reading this blog post, either because you personally know me and care enough to read what I write, or because the title caught your interest.

We humans are addicted to the immediate. We need something to keep us gratified or else, GASP, we’ll be “unhappy”…we want those television ads to go away so we pay for a DVR service. We need to kill five minutes so we download the latest “Angry Birds” game. We need to feel better about ourselves so we text that guy/girl we have a crush on. We need something to read so we click on blog posts that catch our interest.
This is just how our culture has developed! I’m not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, but what would happen if we didn’t think about what we wanted for five minutes? You could spend some quality time with that sibling/spouse/friend! You could go outside and just appreciate the stillness of nature (obviously that’s not possible in some locations). You could make a difference for someone, somewhere. Instead, you’re online reading this blog post that I wrote completely on my phone. What do you need to change? What do I need to change? #online