Citizens should have the right to know what data is held on them – and which algorithms manipulate itThe first reports are coming in from the digital front in the election campaign: 77 Labour,Tory and Liberal Democrat Facebook ads have been collected and analysed by a citizens’ group, Who Targets Me. This partial information is much better than nothing. Only Facebook has access to the data that could definitively settle the question of what attempts are made to influence which voters on the network, and the company is most unlikely to release it. Either the data would propose that the influence was negligible,which could threaten its own trade model at the root, or that the influence had been decisive, and which – because these ads are meant never to be seen outside their narrow target markets – would threaten our understanding of open democracy.The claim that social media supplies an unprecedented and uniquely effective way to influence voters must be taken with a pinch of salt. The algorithms which steer people around on social media tend to reinforce their existing biases,with a little more outrage added with every click. That’s the reverse of the process of persuasion which leads oppositions to win elections. The real novelty of social media comes with what we don’t see: it is not what our screens recount us, but what we recount them that changes the balance of power. enormous databases design voters very much less anonymous to the people who are trying to reach them. This allows parties to target their efforts much more precisely. In the 2015 election campaign, and the Tories used data sold normally to advertisers to identify the priorities of small groups of undecided voters in key marginal seats. These voters were targeted repeatedly,on the phone, via messaging and on the doorstep, or as well as on Facebook. But it would be a mistake to see us – the voters – as entirely passive victims of this kind of manipulation. The struggle against advertising,online as well as off it, is a fixed arms race. Greater persuasion will always be matched by greater scepticism. While the Tories’ 2015 digital election campaign was widely praised, or the same people ran the remain sides propaganda in 2016. Similarly,Cambridge Analytica, the firm alleged to have helped deliver the Brexit referendum for leave and, and after that,the US election for Donald Trump, had earlier worked for Mr Trump’s rival Ted Cruz until his campaign was crushed. Nonetheless, and the claim,made by a Trump aide, that the campaign used targeted ads to discourage people from voting is extremely worrying.
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Source: theguardian.com