The Observer - 04.08.2019

Section:OBS 2N PaGe:44 Edition Date:190804 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 3/8/2019 17:12 cYanmaGentaYellowbla

• The Observer
  44 04.08.19 Comment & Analysis

Political ads are all

over Facebook. But

voters are in the

dark about where

they come from

If there is an autumn

election, people will be

bombarded by a wave

of unregulated ‘news’

On the day Boris

Johnson took over as prime

minister, hundreds of Facebook ads

dropped like confetti into thousands

of UK voters’ news feeds. Many

were virtually identical , featuring

a black-and-white photograph of

Johnson gazing towards an unseen

audience. “These are my priorities,”

one version of the ad read. “What

are yours?”

Quickly, the ads were interpreted

as the start of Johnson’s election

campaign and the splurge drew

immediate parallels with the

Facebook-driven 2016 Vote Leave

campaign, especially since the

director of that campaign – the

Svengali-like Dominic Cummings

• walked into 10 Downing Street
  as Johnson’s most senior adviser
  on the same day. Then on Friday
  we learned, through reports in
  the Guardian, that the political
  campaigning fi rm CTF Partners ,

one of whose heads ran Johnson’s

leadership campaign, was running

a network of unbranded “news”

pages on Facebook on behalf of

its clients.

The Facebook ad blitz rightly

attracted media attention, but

was it inherently sinister? In this

particular case, there is good reason

to be suspicious. Data and digital

advertising were critical to the

success of Vote Leave yet we still

know very little about what data was

collected, how it was used and the

role played by the uncommunicative

Canadian company, AggregateIQ.

Cummings himself has refused to

appear before the Commons select

committee for digital, culture, media

and sport to explain what he did

(and has been found in contempt

of parliament as a consequence).

The Vote Leave campaign has been

found to have broken electoral law.

And this is separate to the lingering

questions about Cambridge

Analytica and the referendum,

rekindled by Netfl ix’s new fi lm, The

Great Hack. There is therefore good

reason to distrust Cummings’s

campaigning methods.

Yet to condemn all online political

campaigns ignores the extent

to which digital advertising has

become ubiquitous since 2016. The

Conservatives may be spending lots

right now, but every major party is

ploughing money into Facebook,

Instagram, Snapchat, Google and

YouTube. According to the Facebook

ad archive, Labour has spent

£175,000 since last October, the

Liberal Democrats £288,000 and

the Brexit party £190,000. And this

is just on Facebook and does not

include what they spend on other

digital platforms, email campaigns

or on data collection and analysis.

Nor is it just the political parties

• non-party campaigners, NGOs
  and individuals are all using digital
  platforms to push their messages,
  as are People’s Vote, Best for
  Britain, Britain’s Future and the
  London mayor. Similarly, Friends
  of the Earth, Liberty, the RSPCA,
  Greenpeace, 38 Degrees and other
  charities are using social media to
  raise awareness of issues such as
  the climate crisis, human rights and
  dog care. There is even a site called
  ScramNews using Facebook ads to
  raise money to pay for anti-Brexit-
  party ads – on Facebook.
  If you want to push a message,
  why not use the cheapest, most
  effective way to mobilise your target
  audience? Using television news
  would, by comparison, seem bizarre
  and anachronistic. Britons aged 16
  to 24 have deserted traditional news
  outlets, we discovered recently from
  Ofcom research. Most young people

get their news online, chiefl y via

social media. Any campaigner who

does not try to reach young people

via their phones is unlikely to last

very long in campaigning.

But until recently we could not

see what candidates and parties

were promising on Facebook. We

did not know if the promises they

made were true, false, distorted,

contradictory, defensible or

unethical. Now each of the major

platforms keeps archives of

political ads so we can look at who

is targeting what at whom. There

is still a lot to be done to improve

the archives, as seen by a recently

published Mozilla report, but we are

far better off than in 2016.

Given the ubiquity of online

political advertising and its

growing transparency, there is

a temptation to think we should

stop worrying and accept it as a

fact of digital life. This would be a

mistake. Why? Because there are

still huge gaps between the laws and

regulations that protect elections

and referendums in the real world

and those that apply online. And, as

the Guardian investigation into CTF

Partners shows , digital propaganda

keeps evolving.

Take transparency. Online, there

are still untold opportunities to

run dark campaigns with funding

from who knows where. We still do

not know the source, for example,

of the £435,154 that a company

called Britain’s Future has spent

on pro-Brexit Facebook ads since

last October. We are only now

discovering that this was one of

a number of political “Astroturf”

campaigns managed covertly by

Lynton Crosby’ s CTF partners,

campaigns that deliberately blurred

political advertising with unbranded

“news”. Should there be an autumn

election, you can be sure there will

be many pop-up campaigns, with

tailored “news” promoted through

hundreds of online ads, whose

sources of funding will be unknown.

A t any future election,

the political parties will use

Facebook’s tools to target adverts

at carefully selected susceptible

voters in marginal constituencies.

They will bombard these voters with

pre-tested messages and we will not

know how they select these voters

or how they adapt their messaging

based on the responses.

And though they will spend

signifi cant amounts on a small

number of voters in a select group of

constituencies, it is highly unlikely

any of this money will be allocated

to the constituency itself. This will

not even be against the law.

Political advertising online may

now be integral to any modern

campaign, and it is becoming more

open and familiar, but there is still

much that must change before

we can stop worrying. Yet, with

Cummings and the Vote Leave team

installed in No 10, and an autumn

election likely, chances of electoral

reform are slim to nonexistent.

Martin Moore is the author

of Democracy Hacked: How

Technology is Destabilizing Global

Politics and a senior lecturer at King’s

College London

The Netfl ix documentary The Great Hack looks at the dark side of social media.

Martin

Moore

May I have

a word?

Jonathan

Bouquet

The shifting

patterns of English:

some things just don’t

need spelling out

“Th e gruel disappeared... Child

as he was, he was desperate

with hunger, and reckless with

misery. He rose from the table;

and advancing to the master,

basin and spoon in hand, said,

somewhat alarmed at his own

temerity: ‘Please, sir, I want

some more.’ ”

Note well “gruel” – “a thin

liquid food of oatmeal or other

meal boiled in milk or water”.

What, then, are we to make of

the following recent examples:

“He’s the – preferably non-

taxed – sugar-high they’ve

been craving after three years

of thin gruel” (that’s about the

prime minister ); “Republicans’

explanations for their refusal

to act are thin gruel ”; “Th e third

Annabelle fi lm – a spin-off

franchise from the ever-

growing and larger Conjuverse

franchise – is a thin gruel .”

My point, very simply, is why

the qualifi er before gruel? It’s

becoming as annoying as those

chumps who insist on putting

“whole” before “gamut” – and

there are so many examples of

that infelicity that I could fi ll an

entire page with them.

Moving briskly along and

what should drop into my inbox

but th is excitingly headlined

communique: “New study

reveals watershed moment

as 79% of UK marketers

acknowledge cross-channel

video advertising wave.” No, me

neither, but after my complaint

last week about the ubiquity of

everyone seemingly being on a

journey , my eye was caught by

the following : “Aaron Goldman,

CMO at 4C, comments: ‘For

brands to succeed, cross-

channel planning should

revolve around consumer

preferences ... In a multi-

screen world, video stands

out for its ability to deliver

rich storytelling at scale

throughout the customer

journey.’ ”

Aaron, please pay more

attention in future or you’ll

have to pack your bags and

‘Please, sir, I want some more.’ sling your hook.

РЕЛИЗ

ПОДГОТОВИЛА

ГРУППА

"What's News"

VK.COM/WSNWS

РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS