Facebook gives rich and instant feedback to advertisers, allowing them to quickly tailor ads to improve outcomes or customize messages even more. A core principle in political advertising is transparency — political ads are supposed to be easily visible to everyone, and everyone is supposed to understand that they are political ads, and where they come from. And it’s expensive to run even one version of an ad in traditional outlets, let alone a dozen different versions. The more that Facebook saturates our lives, families and communities, the harder it is to live without it. We now know that agents in Russia are exploiting the powerful Facebook advertising system directly.

Source: New York Times September 09, 2017 03:00 UTC