Long time listener, first time caller. As someone who’s a big fan of your work generally, especially on topics like Section 230, I’m surprised that you’re taking the stance that social media should ban political ads. I think that that position undervalues the benefits of political ads on social media relative to other political advertising, undermines a culture of free speech, and overstates the harm of disinformation in political ads on social media. Also, it fails to acknowledge that there will almost certainly be unintended consequences of a ban. While each of these topics are complex and reasonable minds can of differ, I think there is enough uncertainty that advocating the step of banning political adverting on social media is unwarranted.

One quick note: I apologize that the first time I’m posting here is to disagree, as I feel that that is poor payment to someone who provides such a wealth of insights.

First, political advertising on social media has two advantages as compared to other political advertising. You fully acknowledged one such advantage: it is more accessible to smaller/upstart candidates.

But when it comes to transparency and fact-checking, while you acknowledge that Google and Facebook “allow third parties to monitor politicians’ advertising practices — a remarkable resource that virtually no other media publishers provide” you oddly don’t follow that thought through to its conclusion: banning political ads on social media is simply going to shift advertising dollars to other forms of targeted advertising, namely direct mail and robocalls. And as you note, these have no similar level of transparency (that I’m aware of at least). Also, fact-checking mailers and robocalls requires more effort from voters because it can’t be done via the same medium. So the primary impact of banning political ads on social media will be to shift spending to other forms of targeted political adverting which (as stated above) are less transparent and where fact-checking requires more work.

Second, I agree with Justice Kennedy’s take that the proper remedy for disinformation from US v Alvarez:

“The remedy for speech that is false is speech that is true. This is the ordinary course in a free society. The response to the unreasoned is the rational; to the uninformed, the enlightened; to the straightout lie, the simple truth…The theory of our Constitution is “that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market,” Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616, 630, 40 S.Ct. 17, 63 L.Ed. 1173 (1919) (Holmes, J., dissenting).

The American people do not need the assistance of a government prosecution to express their high regard for the special place that military heroes hold in our tradition. Only a weak society needs government protection or intervention before it pursues its resolve to preserve the truth. Truth needs neither handcuffs nor a badge for its vindication.”

While Kennedy was talking about regulation of false speech by the government, I think that the principle applies to social media platforms implementing self-imposed bans. Even more so in fact, because Facebook and Google are run by unaccountable billionaires. Endorsing further regulation of speech by such actors is a very bad precedent. And “true speech” doesn’t have to be implemented via fact-checking or labeling by social media platforms. While the Internet has spawned many lies, it has also made it easier than ever to find the truth (on most issues at least), if one is so inclined. This admittedly is a quite subjective position, but I think that it is one that has worked in the United States for many years.

Finally, and most importantly, I think that the assertion in your opening line is flawed: “Political advertising on social media played a major and well-documented role in the 2016 elections.” While common wisdom seems to agree with you, I think the facts indicate it should read: “Disinformation in political advertising on social media played a minor and thoroughly but poorly documented role in the 2016 elections, and has served as a scapegoat by traditional media (liberal and conservative) for harms that probably occurred via traditional media.” I realize that’s probably viewed as a bold claim, so below are some citations to research that supports it.

Note: Many of these citations come via an article by Ben Thompson, “Twitter, Responsibility, and Accountability” (https://stratechery.com/2020/twitter-responsibility-and-accountability/). The research cited addresses either the impact of disinformation generally or the relative impact of disinformation on social media versus mass media, rather than disinformation in social media political advertising specifically. However, I think this research and commentary supports the position that the impact of disinformation in political advertising on social media is vastly overstated.

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Start with this article from the Columbia Journalism Review entitled “Don’t blame the [2016] election on fake news. Blame it on the media.” (https://www.cjr.org/analysis/fake-news-media-election-trump.php via https://stratechery.com/2020/twitter-responsibility-and-accountability/). Here’s one representative excerpt from the piece:

“In light of the stark policy choices facing voters in the 2016 election, it seems incredible that only five out of 150 front-page articles that The New York Times ran over the last, most critical months of the election, attempted to compare the candidate’s policies, while only 10 described the policies of either candidate in any detail.

In this context, 10 is an interesting figure because it is also the number of front-page stories the Times ran on the Hillary Clinton email scandal in just six days, from October 29 (the day after FBI Director James Comey announced his decision to reopen his investigation of possible wrongdoing by Clinton) through November 3, just five days before the election.”

And as Nate Silver of 538 commented, the media (and specifically the New York Times) seemed reluctant to acknowledge its accountability for the impact this had on the election:

“Hillary Clinton would probably be president if FBI Director James Comey had not sent a letter to Congress on Oct. 28. The letter, which said the FBI had “learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation” into the private email server that Clinton used as secretary of state, upended the news cycle and soon halved Clinton’s lead in the polls, imperiling her position in the Electoral College…And yet, from almost the moment that Trump won the White House, many mainstream journalists have been in denial about the impact of Comey’s letter. The article that led The New York Times’s website the morning after the election did not mention Comey or “FBI” even once — a bizarre development considering the dramatic headlines that the Times had given to the letter while the campaign was underway…The motivation for this seems fairly clear: If Comey’s letter altered the outcome of the election, the media may have some responsibility for the result. The story dominated news coverage for the better part of a week, drowning out other headlines, whether they were negative for Clinton (such as the news about impending Obamacare premium hikes) or problematic for Trump (such as his alleged ties to Russia). And yet, the story didn’t have a punchline: Two days before the election, Comey disclosed that the emails hadn’t turned up anything new.”

(https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-comey-letter-probably-cost-clinton-the-election/ via https://stratechery.com/2020/twitter-responsibility-and-accountability/)

Moving to the 2020 election, the Berkman Klein Center for Research at Harvard found that the mass-media bore more responsibility for disinformation on mail-in voter fraud than social media:

“Contrary to the focus of most contemporary work on disinformation, our findings suggest that this highly effective disinformation campaign, with potentially profound effects for both participation in and the legitimacy of the 2020 election, was an elite-driven, mass-media led process. Social media played only a secondary and supportive role.”

(https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3703701# via https://stratechery.com/2020/twitter-responsibility-and-accountability/)

Also, to the extent fake news of any kind (including political advertising) has a substantial impact, it may be a problem for the older generations, and thus a problem that is going away. A study by Science Advance on fake news found “…a strong age effect, which persists after controlling for partisanship and ideology: On average, users over 65 shared nearly seven times as many articles from fake news domains as the youngest age group.” (https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaau4586#F1). While the article does not go into the causes, one possibility is that people over a certain age (including myself at 40+) grew up in an era where you uncritically relied on what you saw or read for your news (ABC, CBS, NBC + your local paper) because, for the most part, it was reliable. Whatever the cause, the generation that grew up squarely in the Internet age seems to be doing a better job flexing its epistemological muscle, which I think is a good thing.

In sum, political ads on social media do far less harm than is commonly believed, the truth is readily accessible without fact-checking or labeling, and there are known downsides to a ban. Also, a ban may also be a classic example of “fighting the last war,” given that younger generations seems to be better at handling misinformation. Lastly, there is a good chance of significant unintended consequences resulting from a ban, as so often happens when you stop behavior via fiat (whether achieved via legislation or otherwise).