Worth reading: this Wired article that discusses the potential impact of banning political ads on social media. Political Ads serve as entry point to phony astroturf communities. For example, the now infamous Internet Research Agency (IRA for short) purchased only 3400 Facebook and Instagram ads. Compare this to the over 61500 Facebook posts, 116000 Instagram posts, and 10.4 million tweets that were disseminated under the guise of authentic user activity.
Fake communities with organic sharing of disinformation had the most impact: from 2015 to 2017, 30 million users were passing along IRA content on Facebook and Instagram.
Read more here: https://www.wired.com/story/leave-paid-political-ads-alone/
Photo by Amine M’Siouri from Pexels
