I can't remember ever seeing an ad on Facebook trying to convince me to go vegan or do anything public-spirited.
Ever.
I have however seen plenty of ads trying to get me to spend money on something/someone.
And conflating the political process with the marketing process is absolutely pernicious in a democracy. The Brexit campaign used micro-targeting of individuals with knowingly dishonest ads that played to their biasses.
That's not persuasion - that's just manipulation.
Put simply, no one should ever be allowed to run organised campaigns based on lying and distortion for any reason. If you need to lie you don't have anything valid to say in the first place so removing you from the public discourse causes no harm to anyone.
Maybe I wasn't clear. I'm not defending political advertising or saying it's a good thing. Just that it exists, and people will pay Facebook for the privilege of reaching your eyeballs even if they don't think they can get money out of you directly, if they think they can get something else out of you, like a vote. So even you're poor financially you are still useful to advertisers because you have something to give.
I agree that most of the time that's a bad thing, although it's possible it can be used by good people trying to convince you to be good, or raise awareness of an important cause. Probably much less frequently, but evaluating good and bad views is very subjective so I'm not going there.
Now perhaps all or advertising is manipulative , dishonest, and immoral. Doesn't detractfrom my point.
Ever.
I have however seen plenty of ads trying to get me to spend money on something/someone.
And conflating the political process with the marketing process is absolutely pernicious in a democracy. The Brexit campaign used micro-targeting of individuals with knowingly dishonest ads that played to their biasses.
That's not persuasion - that's just manipulation.
Put simply, no one should ever be allowed to run organised campaigns based on lying and distortion for any reason. If you need to lie you don't have anything valid to say in the first place so removing you from the public discourse causes no harm to anyone.