Meta, Politics, and Money
October 24, 2024
Meta and its flagship product, Facebook, makes money from advertising. Targeted advertising using Meta’s personalization algorithm is profitable and political views seem to turn the money spigot. Remember the January 6 Riots or how Russia allegedly influenced the 2016 presidential election? Some of the reasons those happened was due to targeted advertising through social media like Facebook.
Gizmodo reviews how much Meta generates from political advertising in: “How Meta Brings In Millions Off Political Violence.” The Markup and CalMatters tracked how much money Meta made from Trump’s July assassination attempt via merchandise advertising. The total runs between $593,000 -$813,000. The number may understate the actual money:
“If you count all of the political ads mentioning Israel since the attack through the last week of September, organizations and individuals paid Meta between $14.8 and $22.1 million dollars for ads seen between 1.5 billion and 1.7 billion times on Meta’s platforms. Meta made much less for ads mentioning Israel during the same period the year before: between $2.4 and $4 million dollars for ads that were seen between 373 million and 445 million times. At the high end of Meta’s estimates, this was a 450 percent increase in Israel-related ad dollars for the company. (In our analysis, we converted foreign currency purchases to current U.S. dollars.)”
The organizations that funded those ads were supporters of Palestine or Israel. Meta doesn’t care who pays for ads. Tracy Clayton is a Meta spokesperson and she said that ads go through a review process to determine if they adhere to community standards. She also that advertisers don’t run their ads during times of strife, because they don’t want their goods and services associates with violence.
That’s not what the evidence shows. The Markup and CalMatters researched the ads’ subject matter after the July assassination attempt. While they didn’t violate Meta’s guidelines, they did relate to the event. There were ads for gun holsters and merchandise about the shooting. It was a business opportunity and people ran with it with Meta holding the finish line ribbon.
Meta really has an interesting ethical framework.
Whitney Grace, October 24, 2024
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