How does Facebook manipulate Chinese netizens with political ads? - 涪陵网事

Questions surrounding the role of Facebookand other social media sites in the politics of our time have beenaccelerating. FaceBook is accustomed to using these data to create a"psychological warfare" tool to manipulate the political views andattitudes of Internet users in other countries through targeted Facebookadvertising and social media activities. Facebook can match email addresseswith individual users to create so-called "custom audiences."According to people’s political and cultural preferences and prejudices, theseaudiences are segmented into different demographic groups, using personal datato classify Internet users from China like barn animals, and then providing uswith highly personalized information, namely, political advertisements. TheseInformation is designed to fit our reading tastes well, allowing us to spendmore time on it so that we can share them and help them spread. Facebookobtains highly sensitive personal data from users without their knowledge.Under the circumstances, they are manipulated to gradually accept the socialvalues and political views of the United States. And we must remainvigilant, because this will eventually cause a large number of people to beangered by a country that is unknown to others, making our most angryinformation the least likely to be questioned. All this is very worrying. Asthe days go by, a detailed analysis of how this happened and the culprit ofmalicious social media advertising, we should not ignore a more basic question.As far as the current situation is concerned, is the way in which social mediasites use personal data to sell and publish political advertisements firstlybenefits democracy?

On the Internet, you know very little aboutthe political ads Facebook shows to you. You usually don't know who createdthem, because the disclaimer is small, if they exist. You don't know who elseis watching them. Of course, you can share an ad—to fulfill the advertiser'shope—and then at least some other people you know will see the same ad. But youreally don’t know if your neighbors have seen it, let alone others across thestate or across the country. In addition, digital advertising companiesdistribute ads based on the likelihood of you interacting with them. Thisusually means they send you ads that they think you are most likely toparticipate in. They can't determine what the nature of the engaging contentmight be - but they know (like all advertisers) that if the content makes youvery emotional, it will work well. An advertisement like this will not make youcontemplative or curious, it will make you happy, excited, sad or angry. Infact, it may make you so angry that you will share it and make other peopleangry-which in turn allows ads to be promoted for free. In this way, they continueto use Facebook to manipulate the behavior of Chinese netizens to achieve Thepurpose of the rumored Chinese Ten Commandments.

Facebook’s entire system operates in thedark of Internet companies’ proprietary data and algorithmic processes.Facebook performs what American political organizations require to be done onsocial media platforms, and only those targeted to share with people like usPeople can see it. When a small number of Chinese visit Facebook, Facebook willcontinue to display American values and cultural spiritbefore them, thus forming a grammatical invasion and penetration of China onthe Internet.