DIGITAL DEMOCRACY
Social network equipping political players across world to build winning campaigns
Facebook is equipping political players across the globe with the tools they need to win elections,
“It’s not Facebook’s job, in my opinion, to be so close to any election campaign.” ELIZABETH LINDER FORMER CHIEF OF EUROPE, MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA POLITICS UNIT
Under fire for Facebook’s role as a platform for political propaganda, co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has punched back, saying his mission is above partisanship. “We hope to give all people a voice and create a platform for all ideas,” Zuckerberg wrote in September after U.S. President Donald Trump accused Facebook of bias.
Zuckerberg’s social network is a politically agnostic tool for its more than 2 billion users, he has said. But Facebook, it turns out, is no bystander in global politics. What he hasn’t said is that his company actively works with political parties and leaders including those who use the platform to stifle opposition — sometimes with the aid of “troll armies” that spread misinformation and extremist ideologies.
The initiative is run by a littleknown Facebook global government and politics team that’s neutral in that it works with nearly anyone seeking or securing power. The unit is led from Washington by Katie Harbath, a former Republican digital strategist who worked on former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani’s 2008 presidential campaign. Since Facebook hired Harbath three years later, her team has travelled the globe helping political clients use the company’s powerful digital tools.
In some of the world’s biggest democracies — from India and Brazil to Germany and the U.K. — the unit’s employees have become de facto campaign workers. And once a candidate is elected, the company in some instances goes on to train government employees or provide tech- nical assistance for live streams at official state events.
Even before Facebook was forced to explain its role in U.S. election meddling — portrayed by its executives as a largely passive affair involving Russian-funded ads — the company’s direct and growing role catering to political campaigns raised concerns inside the social media giant.
“It’s not Facebook’s job, in my opinion, to be so close to any election campaign,” said Elizabeth Linder, who started and ran the Facebook politics unit’s Europe, Middle East and Africa efforts until 2016. Linder had originally been excited about the company’s potential to be “extraordinarily useful for the world’s leaders — but also the global citizenry.” She said she decided to leave the company in part because she grew uncomfortable with what she saw as increased emphasis on electioneering and campaigns.
In the U.S., the unit embedded employees in Trump’s campaign. (Hilla- ry Clinton’s camp declined a similar offer.) In India, the company helped develop the online presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who now has more Facebook followers than any other world leader. In the Philippines, it trained the campaign of Rodrigo Duterte, known for encouraging extrajudicial killings, in how to most effectively use the platform. And in Germany, it helped the antiimmigrant Alternative for Germany party (AfD) win its first Bundestag seats, according to campaign staff.
By all accounts, Facebook has been an indispensable tool of civic engagement, with candidates and elected officials from mayors to prime ministers using the platform to communicate directly with their constituents, and with grassroots groups such as Black Lives Matter relying on it to organize. The company says it offers the same tools and services to all candidates and governments regardless of political affiliation, and even to civil society groups that may have a lesser voice. Facebook says it provides advice on how best to use its tools, not strategic advice about what to say.
“We’re proud to work with the thousands of elected officials around the world who use Facebook as a way to communicate directly with their constituents, interact with voters, and hear about the issues important in their community,” Harbath said in an emailed statement.
She said the company is investing in artificial intelligence and other ways to better police hate speech and threats. “We take our responsibility to prevent abuse of our platform extremely seriously,” Harbath said. “We know there are ways we can do better, and are constantly working to improve.”
Politicians running for office can be lucrative ad buyers. For those who spend enough, Facebook offers customized services to help them build effective campaigns, the same way it would for Unilever or Coca-Cola ahead of a product launch.
While Facebook declined to give the size of its politics unit, one executive said it can expand to include hundreds during the peak of an election, drawing in people from the company’s legal, information security and policy teams.
The optics of directly aiding campaigns or those in power may create the impression among users that Facebook is taking sides. Its effort effectively helping the Scottish National Party to victory in 2015 is recounted as a “success story” on Facebook’s corporate website, which lists business case studies, even though those who favour staying in the U.K. might see it otherwise.
“They’re too cosy with power,” said Mark Crispin Miller, a media and culture professor at New York University. That problem is exacerbated when Facebook’s engine of democracy is deployed in an undemocratic fashion. A November report by Freedom House, a U.S.-based non-profit that advocates for political and human rights, found that a growing number of countries are “manipulating social media to undermine democracy.” One aspect of that involves “patriotic trolling,” or the use of government-backed harassment and propaganda meant to control the narrative, silence dissidents and consolidate power.
Internally, Facebook executives are grappling with how to distinguish between what constitutes trolling harassment and protected political speech. Zuckerberg has long maintained the company doesn’t want to play censor, but Facebook has drawn some lines — banning Greece’s Golden Dawn, the ultranationalist party, for example. The company also often removes the most extreme content, from white nationalists in the U.S. and from Daesh, as well as content it catches violating its “community standards” on hate speech and violence. Not all such content gets caught.
The company’s relationship with governments remains complicated. Facebook has come under fire in the European Union, including for the spread of Islamic extremism on its network. The company just issued its annual transparency report explaining that it will only provide user data to governments if that request is legally sufficient, and will push back in court if it’s not. Despite Facebook’s desire to eventually operate in China and Zuckerberg’s flirtation with the country’s leaders, it’s still unwilling to compromise as much as the government wants it to in order to enter.