Landing page for a recent Facebook alert:
Assuming that I am not special, why does Facebook the Company care whether or not we all vote? (as it happens, the ballot in our suburb is mostly taken up with candidates running unopposed; in the general election, it is nearly all unopposed Democrats)
If this is about general virtue, why not encourage Americans to quit smoking, eat less, study and work harder? Those are much more important and useful messages in all but a handful of swing states.
Because if you don’t vote, political advertising on Facebook is less valuable (why advertise to people who won’t vote anyway?), and thus FB earns less.
Why is that substantially less valuable?
– Russian bots will happily pay for fake political advertisement, but obviously won’t vote (yet?)
– Mike Bloomberg will happily pay for ads as long as they help convince people not to cast votes for Trump: voting for any Dem nominee or simply staying home should be OK.
If you weren’t planning to vote but a Facebook ad is enough motivation for you to now vote, odds are you’ll vote Democrat. Facebook likes that.
Facebook leadership has been heavily right-leaning though? They don’t want dems to cut down on their revenue by stopping foreign campaign influencers.
Simple: because it is uncontroversial (until now, at least).
To tell, or even suggest, someone to eat less, or to study and work harder is controversial. It’s politically charged.