What Do Pompeii, the Titanic and Facebook Have in Common?

What Do Pompeii, the Titanic and Facebook Have in Common?

Imagine you lived in Pompeii, way back when, and the Emperor’s Office in Rome sent out a warning containing the message: “you live in a dangerous area we are shutting it down”—after a nearby volcano erupted and destroyed the town. What if owners of the Titanic put in a request for additional lifeboats as the ship was sinking?

Extreme examples—maybe—but it’s kind of how I feel about Facebook halting political advertising just as the polls close on Election Day.

Up until the week before Election Day, a political ad can basically promote anything, in the name of free speech, no matter how untrue, irrelevant or just plain nefariously provocative it may be.

Ah, but Facebook gets tough the week after!!! No new ads, no new messages, the campaigns will have to recycle their best performing ads and count on all the data they have to make sure that they, in fact, provoke.

And then the Facebook hammer strikes a blow for justice, and hard, because they are worried that a winner might not emerge on election night (prescient folks). After the election, they will halt all political advertising and will forbid…forbid any candidate from declaring victory until the results are official and accepted—and by the way, I’m not sure on that last part, but I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt here.

Let’s be clear, the damage has already been done. And every second of every day, the damage goes deeper and broader as fake news spreads, conspiracy theories are given birth and nurtured, and the cauldron of hatred is stirred. The inexorable cycle of sharing and promoting drives revenue and profit.

And frankly, that’s the point. I’m not worried about the advertising after the election, if, and I say if, there is no clear-cut winner, or if President Trump refuses to accept the people’s decision.

There will be no need for violence and disruption to be overtly fueled by advertising. President Trump doesn’t need advertising to get his messages across. And to be fair, Far Right and Far Left don’t disrupt by advertisement. They use the platform, freely and without penalty, to both organize themselves and spread their own brands of hatred, aided and abetted by the dynamics of revenue and algorithmic sharing.

And, needless to say, President Trump’s every utterance becomes fodder for the 24-hour news cycle and the posts of millions of his followers. Advertising? When Facebook spreads it all—and amplifies it—and lights a fire under it? Why bother?

As I have written many times before, I am, at the core, a fan of Facebook. It has a sweet utility when used for benign connecting and sharing. And I sincerely believe that we, the users and the Ad Community are at great fault—the former, for how we use it and let our children use it, and the latter, for looking the other way when we had the opportunity to effect change, and hiding behind the righteous indignation of a failed boycott revealed how little our “big client” dollars are relevant to the platform.

The notion that Facebook exists for a greater cause, lost to the rest of us, is not only absurd, it's offensive and revisionist. Remember, Facebook was born from FaceMash—security breaches, copyright violations and individual privacy violations abounded.

Don’t be fooled. The real issue isn’t about the few ad dollars Facebook is so altruistically forfeiting during what is sure to be a tumultuous week, ad dollars they will make in torrential volume of share traffic.

The danger will be the amplification of lies and falsehoods, of calls to get out in the streets, of hatred and incitement…and it will happen.

So, what do we do?

Stay vigilant. Do not pass along what you can’t verify. Ignore sources you don’t know. And always think before you share.

Truth be told, I struggled to land on the appropriate concluding quote this week. After much agitated thought, I opted to use this frightening quote for us to learn something about the “political advertising” we so often consume.

“Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated are confident they are acting on their own free will”— Joseph Goebbels

Please know that I do not mean to equate Facebook with Nazis or any totalitarian systems here. This quote, however, can help us understand the way predictive algorithms operate across social media. Always remember that every piece of advertising and random posts that pop up on your social media account has been programmed to do so, deliberately.   

Whatever party you represent, whatever country you are from, it's your obligation to do what you can to limit the damage and prevent the further spread of divisive and sometimes patently untrue information and hatred.

What do you think?