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What are Facebook ‘dark adverts’ - and could they swing the General Election?
Are political parties using Facebook to ‘buy’ elections? It’s an unsettling idea – but it’s been given serious consideration as parties spend millions on what are described as ‘dark ads’.
They’re known as ‘dark’ because they’re aimed at specific groups of people – so everyone sees a different advert.
In theory, the adverts could be tailored to manipulate voters based on their individual psychology.
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It’s also made it extremely hard to keep track on what political parties are promising in their adverts – and to whom.
Some people believe the use of such adverts may have contributed to recent political upsets such as the Brexit vote.
Who targets me?
A British group ‘Who Targets Me?’ is monitoring how the adverts are being used in this General Election – using a plug-in for Google’s Chrome browser, and thousands of volunteers.
Who Targets Me co-founder Louis Knight-Webb told Yahoo.co.uk, ‘In theory, these adverts could be psychometrically tweaked for every individual.
The adverts are based on what Facebook knows about people – which could include anything from where they live to what car they drive to their emotional state.
Knight-Webb says, ‘We’ve got 5,500 users, so we’re still growing – we have information on 620 constituencies. So far, we can see that parties are using them.
‘Greens are appearing, Lib Dems are using quite a lot of different adverts which they appear to be testing.
‘It changes every day.
Why are ‘dark ads’ different?
Unlike traditional poster campaigns, the adverts are not visible to the public – so political parties may not be held to account in the same way, for instance, the Brexit campaign was lampooned for the £350m NHS promise painted on the side of its ‘battle bus’.
Knight-Webb says, ‘You can’t see what adverts I’m seeing – I can’t see what you’re seeing. There is no way government bodies can audit these kinds of adverts.
Recent reports have linked data companies to multi-million Facebook advertising campaigns used by Donald Trump and the Leave campaign.
Knight-Webb says, ‘The adverts use Facebook data to psychometrically profile voters – so each voter might see an advert which is psychometrically tweaked specifically for them, right down to the language used.’
‘Nobody has done this before. You download the plug-in, you fill out a very short form – and then every time you log into Facebook, it scrolls the page for you. We’re using AI to find out which parties are targeting people, where’.
Amid concerns over the use of such adverts, Britain’s Information Commissioner is to investigate the use of such adverts – and whether Facebook is using information about the websites users visit in order to target adverts.
Elizabeth Denham says that the review will examine adverts used during the campaign.
How much does Facebook know about you?
Whether or not companies really can swing elections using ‘analytics’ and personalised adverts, Facebook knows an alarming amount about you.
That includes using its technology to work out private psychological data – including your psychological state.
Facebook faced controversy earlier this month when a leaked document showed it was using data to analyse if 14-year-old children felt, ‘worthless’, ‘insecure’ or ‘anxious’.
Cambridge University researchers have conducted long-running research into just how much one can learn from people’s Facebook posts and ‘Likes’.
The Magic Sauce tool produced by the Cambridge Psychometrics Centre is an ongoing psychological experiment where the tool uses analytics to build a psychological profile of you – based on your Likes.
You can try it here – applymagicsauce.com – if you log in with your Facebook details.
A previous University of Cambridge study found that it’s possible to guess a person’s sexuality with a high degree of accuracy, based simply on their Facebook ‘Likes’.
This isn’t a case of people liking, say, topless models if they’re straight – it’s a more complex process where a computer algorithm compares your ‘Likes’ with typical choices for certain groups, such as male straight people,, or female gay people, and makes a guess.
Can adverts really ‘swing’ elections?
Much has been made in recent reports of parties using ‘dark adverts’ on Facebook – in particular the two Brexit campaigns.
But so far, there is not a great deal of evidence that the adverts ‘manipulate’ people any more than the average TV broadcast or election leaflet.
Social Media Specialist Jonathan Pollinger says, ‘I don’t think people should be worried by dark ads whether they are political, cause or business related.
‘Those publishing them have the ability to target exactly the market they are after and to tailor their message accordingly.
‘I don’t see a problem with that unless the message is false (fake news) – for instance if one party suggested that rival voters could vote by text, thus wasting their votes. But in the UK, would the political parties do so? I don’t think so.
‘As the message has been crafted for the recipient, if it’s an honest message they are likely to enjoy it and be receptive. I don’t see a problem with that. Voters are savvy too and I think they’d see through most false/fake news and claims.’
