Social networking giant Facebook pointed out in recent months that Russia bought more than 3,000 ads through Facebook in previous U.S. presidential elections, and Facebook estimated that at least 10 million people had seen the ads at the time. In light of the situation, Facebook issued a statement saying that it would hire 1,000 additional employees to review submitted ads to prevent Russia or other governments from using the same methods to interfere with the fairness of elections in other countries.
One of the important factors that makes the impact of this fake ad so widespread and huge is that Facebook correctly judges users’ preferences and increases their trust in fake ads.
The great thing about Facebook is that when it sees that you like to like, comment or share a certain type of content, it will give you more updates of that type of activity, for example, if you are a “yellow silk”, you often pay attention to the relevant information on Facebook, and it will provide you with less information about blue silk.
In the same way, during the U.S. campaign, when users have a certain political orientation, they will naturally receive more advertisements about this aspect, and they will also subjectively like and believe the content. Therefore, when they see these fake election advertisements, they will indirectly shake their political judgment.
On the other hand, Facebook has long taken over the news media ecosystem and has become the main axis for many people to receive social information. In the era before the popularity of Facebook, the public often relied on traditional media to receive social information, but since the popularity of Facebook, the public’s dependence has long shifted to Facebook. Because Facebook has occupied the dominant position in the distribution of media information, once a large number of fake ads appear, this is enough to affect the entire offline ecosystem.
In the case of fake election advertising, Facebook and social media as a whole have exposed a major problem: the lack of a rigorous monitoring and control system for online media information. In recent years, we have seen a lot of fake news and fake news from “content farms” flooding major social platforms, which is the best ironclad proof. Remember? Not long ago, there was a fake news on Facebook, it was the artist Yue Wenle and Ruan Xiaoyi “public relationship”, which caused a sensation in the city, and the two needed to come out one after another to clarify the incident.
In fact, since more and more misinformation has flooded the Internet, many people in foreign countries have returned to traditional media such as Time Magazine, and they do not believe the information of other online media because the former has always been well regulated and more credible. This has undoubtedly had a major impact on the development of social media.
On the other hand, Facebook is about to devote a lot of resources to reviewing content and ads, which means that its freedom of information will soon be tightened, and the impact level may involve some real ads and messages. Combined, it remains to be seen whether social media will retain its leading role in the distribution of media information.
