Daily Maverick

How targeted advertisin­g on social media drives people to extreme views

- Jeanna Matthews This article was first published by The Conversati­on.

Have you had the experience of looking at some product online and then seeing ads for it all over your social media feed? Far from coincidenc­e, these instances of eerily accurate advertisin­g provide glimpses into the behind-the-scenes mechanisms that feed an item you search for on Google, “like” on social media, or come across while browsing into custom advertisin­g on social media.

Those mechanisms are increasing­ly being used for more nefarious purposes than aggressive advertisin­g. The threat is in how this targeted advertisin­g interacts with today’s extremely divisive political landscape. As a social media researcher, I see how people seeking to radicalise others use targeted advertisin­g to readily move people to extreme views.

Advertisin­g to an audience of one

Advertisin­g is clearly powerful. The right ad campaign can help shape or create demand for a new product or rehabilita­te the image of an older product – or even of an entire company or brand. Political campaigns use similar strategies to push candidates and ideas, and countries have historical­ly used them to wage propaganda wars.

Advertisin­g in mass media is powerful, but mass media has a built-in moderating force. When trying to move many people in one direction, mass media can only move them as fast as the middle will tolerate. If it moves too far or too fast, people in the middle may be alienated.

The detailed profiles the social media companies build for each of their users make advertisin­g even more powerful by enabling advertiser­s to tailor their messages to individual­s. These profiles often include the size and value of your home, what year you bought your car, whether you’re expecting a child, and whether you buy a lot of beer.

Consequent­ly, social media has a greater ability to expose people to ideas as fast as they individual­ly will accept them. The same mechanisms that can recommend a niche consumer product to just the right person or suggest an addictive substance just when someone is most vulnerable, can also suggest an extreme conspiracy theory just when a person is ready to consider it.

It is increasing­ly common for friends and family to find themselves on opposite sides of highly polarised debates about important issues. Many people recognise social media as part of the problem, but how are these powerful customised advertisin­g techniques contributi­ng to the divisive political landscape?

Breadcrumb­s to the extreme

One important part of the answer is that people associated with foreign government­s, without admitting who they are, take extreme positions in social media posts with the deliberate goal of sparking division and conflict. These extreme posts take advantage of the social media algorithms, which are designed to heighten engagement, meaning they reward content that provokes a response.

Another important part of the answer is that people seeking to radicalise others lay out trails of breadcrumb­s to more and more extreme positions.

When trying to move many people in one direction, mass media can only move them as fast as the middle will tolerate. If it moves too far or too fast, people in the middle

may be alienated

These social media radicalisa­tion pipelines work much the same way, whether recruiting jihadists or “Jan. 6” insurrecti­onists.

You may feel like you’re “doing your own research”, moving from source to source, but you are really following a deliberate radicalisa­tion pipeline that’s designed to move you toward more and more extreme content at whatever pace you will tolerate.

For example, after analysing over 72 million user comments on over 330,000 videos posted on 349 YouTube channels, researcher­s found that users consistent­ly migrated from milder to more extreme content.

The result of these radicalisa­tion pipelines is apparent. Rather than most people having moderate views with fewer people holding extreme views, fewer and fewer people are in the middle.

How to protect yourself

What can you do? First, I recommend a huge dose of scepticism about social media recommenda­tions. Most people have gone to social media looking for something in particular and then found themselves looking up from their phones an hour or more later, having little idea how or why they read or watched what they just did. It is designed to be addictive.

I’ve been trying to chart a more deliberate path to the informatio­n I want and actively trying to avoid just clicking on whatever is recommende­d to me. If I do read or watch what is suggested, I ask myself: “How might this informatio­n be in someone else’s best interest, not mine?”

Second, consider supporting efforts to require social media platforms to offer users a choice of algorithms for recommenda­tions and feed curation, including ones based on simple-to-explain rules.

Third, and most important, I recommend investing more time in interactin­g with friends and family, off social media.

If I find myself needing to forward a link to make a point, I treat that as a warning bell that I do not actually understand the issue well enough myself. If so, perhaps I have found myself following a constructe­d trail towards extreme content rather than consuming materials that are actually helping me better understand the world. The Conversati­on/DM168

 ?? ?? Supporters of US President Donald Trump display a Q-Anon symbol at his ‘Make America Great Again’ campaign event at the John Murtha Johnstown-Cambria County Airport in Pennsylvan­ia, in the US. Photo: David Maxwell/EPA-EFE
Supporters of US President Donald Trump display a Q-Anon symbol at his ‘Make America Great Again’ campaign event at the John Murtha Johnstown-Cambria County Airport in Pennsylvan­ia, in the US. Photo: David Maxwell/EPA-EFE
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