The Normalization of Malicious Advertising

Ryan Severance
RS482415@ohio.edu


There is a vile trend that's increasingly dominating our social media feeds, newspapers, and favorite websites. It doesn't care about privacy, has no regard for common decency, nor does it serve the greater public interest. Rather, it's centered on the proliferation of misleading or downright false information. We're talking, of course, about advertising.

It should come as no surprise that advertising in mass media poses a unique set of ethical dilemmas and business challenges to producers and consumers of news and information alike. History is no stranger to malevolent advertising, which has spread racism, sexism, and other forms of hatred across the airwaves in the name of profit for generations. What's new, however, is today's social media companies, massive advertising firms, and the unchecked forces of globalization that are making it easier than ever before to communicate, and thus to spread disinformation.

Increasingly, today's social media behemoths, from Facebook to Twitter to Weibo, are all confronting the same problem; how to change the public perception that they're harming society with misinformation and downright lies. Notice that I say change the public perception, rather than fixing the problem; don't kid yourself that these social media companies actually care enough to fight this problem, nor should you be so foolish as to believe this is an inadvertent byproduct of their system. Indeed, this entire fake news phenomenon and slew of vicious, misleading advertisements is the point of these platforms, not a byproduct of them.

Today's vicious advertising mishaps aren't failures; they're features.

Source: Oberlo.com

Few people have more to gain from the gross bastardization of our news and information ecosystem than men like Mark Zuckerberg. Tech behemoths get paid billions of dollars - Facebook's market valuation is now more than half a trillion - precisely because they're so savvy at spreading around lies and deceit. While the Zuckerbergs of the world approach the public, hat in hand, to say how remorseful they are for their ad's negative effects and to promise they can't change public opinion, they're simultaneously making the opposite pitch to the advertisers who they exist to serve; advertise on Facebook, on Twitter, on Instragram, and we will change hearts and minds in your favor.

The results of this have been disastrous - for us. For the social media feeds that allow these fake ads to fester in our timelines, the results have been extraordinarily lucrative. There is no greater commodity in the 21st century than the human attention span, and the Zuckerbergs, followed by their hordes of advertisers, have our fully undivided attention and the expensive clicks that come with it.

Human beings have a psychological need to felt wanted. To buy new things. To accumulate value in material form. Facebook, Twitter, and the advertisements which infest these platforms like termites understand this, and manipulate our longings to rack up huge profit margins. We've always known advertisements have been bad for us; we never imagined they'd hijack our own socialization platforms, finding and exploiting our weaknesses with such ruthless efficiency.

The worst part is this isn't likely to change; the public is concerned, media practitioners are concerned, heck, even Congress is upset. But who cares? In this day and age, when have those three actors ever been able to constrain advertising? To constrain the Zuckerbergs of the world? Never. This problem will only grow worse; the misuse of advertising to achieve nefarious ends is only beginning. We are at the dawn of a new, digital era - one dominated by deceit and plagued by misinformation. All in the name of profit.

Don't believe me? Maybe we should check out my Facebook page - I've got a great bridge to show you.