The Making of Political Ads
Essay, together with Nayantara Ranganathan
The Making of Political Ads
Published at the Internet Democracy Project
Enhanced transparency for political ads, rather than shining a light, functions as a cover, obfuscating the impact of targeted and optimised ad infrastructures. In this essay, we use data collected at the Persuasion Lab (ad.watch) to problematise this central classification, and argue that the very nature of targeted ads is inherently political.
"The complications and messiness of classification might make one surmise that platforms like Facebook are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. However, the finer point to be gleaned comes forth in considering exactly whose interests these classifications are working to serve. If such classification is questionable at best, and disingenuous at worst, why do platforms nevertheless work with this imperfect fiction?"