> ...it is simultaneously claimed that targeted ads are so powerful that they are single-handedly responsible for every right-wing political victory in the past few years
Not surely so. There's the argument[0] that political misinformation is:
* Weak in high profile partisan races because pre-existing beliefs hardly change
* Strong when people don't have string pre-existing opinions, e.g. misinformation about voter ID laws causing people to stay home from the polls
I think targeting work best on people at the margins. There was also some good discussion this week on HN on the effectiveness of digital advertising[1]
I don't understand your criticism. If the TV were given close to free and then subsidized by ads, sure. But I'm paying >$500 for the TV, why should I get ads too?
Is this one of those instances where regulatory laws would help? Something like requiring publishers to place a notice saying, "This article typically invokes hope. The ads shown on this page utilize this tendency".
These premium ads look like the logical progression of content-based advertising. The only slimy thing is them pretending to be randomly placed.
It's still controversial. KBC (state media) has an article[1] disproving the claim. The Standard (one of 2 major local news) has an article[2] exploring alleged papers from the Attorney General's Office that specify Kenya's port income as collateral. The papers were exposed by John Githongo[3], a politician who has tendencies of uncovering government misdeeds. He was in exile a while back...
Not surely so. There's the argument[0] that political misinformation is:
* Weak in high profile partisan races because pre-existing beliefs hardly change
* Strong when people don't have string pre-existing opinions, e.g. misinformation about voter ID laws causing people to stay home from the polls
I think targeting work best on people at the margins. There was also some good discussion this week on HN on the effectiveness of digital advertising[1]
[0] https://www.vox.com/2017/11/6/16504454/misinformation-fake-n...
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21465873