ABSTRACT
Social media and in particular Facebook constituted a central partner in the development of micro-targeting tactics of non-transparent political persuasion. This chapter examines the business model that informs the evolution of Facebook in terms not just of advertising per se, but of the formation of meta data banks that are made available directly or indirectly to corporate clients for financial, political, and other campaigns. The Cambridge Analytica affair has helped bring this dimension of social media business practices to light and has generated considerable conversation and action, much of it controversial, designed to reduce their damage at a time when social media have already undermined legacy “print” media. A principal concern is whether in response to political criticism social media have taken on excessive responsibility for gate-keeping and fact-checking, sometimes in alliance with questionable institutions. These include propagandists masquerading as “think tanks” and intelligence agencies. Their impact has been severe for left-leaning sites whose information quality may be robust but whose opinions irk the establishment. Indeed it may be argued that the RussiaGate affair is being used a pretext for Internet censorship.
