Facebook and Instagram will allow some US users to turn off political ads starting Wednesday; the feature will roll out to all US users over the next few weeks
- Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday announced the social network will allow its users to turn off seeing political ads.
CNBCSalvador Rodriguez
Context & Ripple Effects
This feature delivers on a promise made five months earlier, when Facebook defended its refusal to fact-check political ads but offered a "see fewer political ads" control as a compromise. Shipping an actual off switch moves that concession from principle to product, and it lands mid-year in an election cycle where every platform decision about political advertising is under scrutiny.
US users gain a direct lever to remove political ads from Facebook and Instagram over the following weeks, immediately shrinking the audience campaigns can guarantee reaching on the two platforms.
Political advertisers face a smaller effective addressable base in the middle of the 2020 cycle, since spend targeted at opted-out users is wasted by design.
Second-order effects
Campaigns and PACs have to shift budget toward users who haven't opted out and toward non-political inventory, raising effective costs per reached voter on Facebook properties relative to other channels.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds — opt-out controls, then an election-eve ad pause, then a full post-election ban, then algorithmic down-ranking of political content in News Feed — political advertising shifts from a core revenue line Facebook defends to a category it progressively constrains by default, with each step normalizing the next.
The trend: Facebook is moving from defending unlimited political ads toward systematically limiting them — first user opt-outs, then time-boxed bans, then feed-level suppression of political content.
Facebook preps its political ads opt-out to ‘both-sides both sides’ and I'm wondering if this also includes ads targeted with voter data matching uploaded thru Custom Audiences? https://www.nytimes.com/... by @MikeIsaac
Elizabeth Linder, founder of Facebook's govt & politics division in Europe says “the company consistently falls short” when it comes to elections. It needs a deeper understanding of “current risks...and the biggest threats to our democracy”. #R4Today https://www.bbc.co.uk/...
I can't believe how much ink the press is giving Facebook for this spineless move that essentially is a user option which will be mostly set by the most sophisticated users and mostly ignored by those most vulnerable to disinfo. https://twitter.com/...
Now You Can Opt Out of Seeing Political Ads on Facebook; US FB/Instagram users will also see “details on how and when to vote, information about voter registration, voting by mail and early voting” at top of news feeds https://www.nytimes.com/...
This isn't going to have an impact on the most vulnerable users who are less Facebook literate, less likely to fiddle with their ad settings, and more likely to buy into the spurious information Facebook is getting paid to show them. https://twitter.com/...
This quote from Zuck is off point: ""For those of you who've already made up your minds and just want the election to be over, we hear you — so we're also introducing the ability to turn off seeing political ads. We'll still remind you to vote." 1/ https://www.nytimes.com/...
Facebook letting users opt-out of political ads is a big deal, but it's immediate impact is that it puts even more pressure on organic social to engage users and spur engagement on the platform https://www.cnbc.com/...
If only I could turn off all political posts. That's the main reason I quit spending time there. Both political sides became insufferably loud and obnoxious. Facebook will allow users to turn off political ads: Mark Zuckerberg https://www.cnbc.com/...
So instead of holding a line on politicians paying to spread lies on its platform, @facebook will allow “some” Americans to turn lies off? @twitter's outright ban was braver. @finkd: Please ban microtargeting, don't take dark money, & enforce integrity policies on all ad buyers h…
Not about making up your mind on the candidate or being sick of the election. Many engaged citizens just want FB to stop surfacing political ads with misinformation and harmful content. 2/2
One thing that's remarkable about Facebook (the bad place) is how they are able to roll out relatively complicated things so fast. https://twitter.com/...