AFP, Las Vegas, US :
A senior Facebook executive on Tuesday said the world’s biggest social network unintentionally helped put Donald Trump in the White House but warned against dramatic rule changes.
The Trump campaign did effectively use Facebook to rally support for his presidential run, and the social network should be mindful of that without making moves that stifle free political discourse, Andrew Bosworth said in a lengthy post on his personal Facebook page triggered by The New York Times publishing an internal memo he wrote.
“So was Facebook responsible for Donald Trump getting elected?” Bosworth asked.
“I think the answer is yes, but not for the reasons anyone thinks.”
Bosworth contended Trump was not elected because of Russia or misinformation or Cambridge Analytica, but rather because he ran “the single best digital ad campaign I’ve ever seen from any advertiser.”
He went on to say that, since Facebook has the same ad policies in place now, the outcome of the 2020 election could be the same as it was four years ago.
“As tempting as it is to use the tools available to us to change the outcome, I am confident we must never do that or we will become that which we fear,” Bosworth wrote.
That doesn’t mean Facebook should not draw a line when it comes to how it is used, he reasoned. Clearly inciting violence, thwarting voting, and other blatant transgressions should be banned, but voters should be trusted to decide what kind of leaders they want to elect, according to Bosworth.
“If we don’t want hate-mongering politicians then we must not elect them,” Bosworth wrote.
“If we change the outcomes without winning the minds of the people who will be ruled then we have a democracy in name only. If we limit what information people have access to and what they can say then we have no democracy at all.”
Bosworth then touched on Russian interference, ‘fake news’-type information that was spread, and the data set harvested by Cambridge Analytica, three areas connected to Facebook and the 2016 presidential election, where the social media site has taken some heat.
That naturally led to a discussion of the Trump campaign’s use of the site.
‘He didn’t get elected because of Russia or misinformation or Cambridge Analytica,’ Bosworth argued, listing three ways Facebook’s platform is sometimes blamed for helping the GOP candidate.
‘But Parscale and Trump just did unbelievable work,’ the Facebook head continued, referencing the president’s digital director turned 2020 campaign manager. ‘They weren’t running misinformation or hoaxes. They weren’t micro-targeting or saying different things to different people. They just used tools we had to show the right creative to each person.’
‘The use of custom audiences, video, e-commerce and fresh creative remains the high water mark of digital ad campaigns in my opinion,’ Bosworth added.
