The dark side of tech: why the Guardian asks tough questions about Silicon Valley
1Reported today on The Guardian Technology
For the full article visit: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/19/dark-side-of-tech-silicon-valley-guardian
The dark side of tech: why the Guardian asks tough questions about Silicon Valley
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When Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress in October, the Facebook founder and chief executive faced pointed questions about his decision to exempt politicians from a policy barring advertisers from promoting false claims – or to put it another way, his decision to allow politicians to spend money to promote lies.
"This isn't about helping the politicians," he told congresswoman Rashida Tlaib. "This is about making sure that people can see for themselves what politicians are saying."
Since the 2016 election, during which Facebook allowed candidates to purchase so-called "dark ads" that could only be seen by whatever narrow slice of the electorate they were targeted at, Facebook has promised to provide more transparency by building a political ad archive. If you want to know how your local city council candidates are selling themselves to the electorate on Facebook, you can navigate to a relatively user-friendly site and see exactly what they're saying.
So far, so reasonable, right?
Not exactly. Over the past week alone, Donald Trump's re-election campaign has run more than 16,000 different advertisements on Facebook. And that's just one week, just one candidate, and just Facebook! At any given moment, the Trump campaign will have between 1,000 and 5,000 different ads running simultaneously. If you want to take a peek, head to this link and start scrolling. Chances are you'll give up – or the page will freeze – before you get to the