Facebook Ads, Fake News and the Shockingly Low Cost of Influencing an Election

TLDR: the entire experiment took less than an hour of work and just $50 dollars of Facebook ads. The results were appalling.

Backstory

It’s now known that the Russians bought Facebook ads promoting fake news stories with the intent of influencing the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

So today I’ll provide a comprehensive overview of the Russian’s Facebook advertising playbook for fake news.

Specifically, I’ll cover:

  • How to set up fake news and broadcast propaganda via Facebook ads, step by step.
  • Quantify the cost and impact distributing fake news via Facebook ad campaigns.
  • Explore if this influence peddling strategy is still viable today, and how effective (or ineffective) Facebook is at combatting ads that promote fake news.

Let’s get to work!

Step 1: Create a Fake News Website

This is super easy:

  • Sign up for a free blog hosting service and customize a template. In my example, I went with “Citizen News Network” and used a backwards CNN logo.
  • Create a fake news story. The most effective fake news stories exploit the most divisive issues within society. In this case I just re-used a popular fake news story about a protester that purported to be paid to protest Donald Trump rallies.

Step 2: Create a Fake News Page on Facebook

Go to Facebook. Create a fake company page. Upload your fake logo and fake news stories, like this:

Step 3: Create a Facebook Ad, Promoting the Fake News on Your Fake Page

Facebook makes it super easy to promote posts. Just click on the “Boost Post” button, as shown here:

Next, we must target the Facebook ad to people who we think will be interested in seeing it.

To hack an election, you’ll want to target the swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, all of which had reasonably close outcomes. Had all three gone the other way, we’d have a different President in office today.

You must also include “Detailed Targeting” corresponding to the interests and demographics of the people we think will eat this stuff up. That could be:

  • People who donate to conservative political causes.
  • People who are likely to engage with conservative political content.

Step 4: Analyzing the Fake News Facebook Ad Campaign’s Results

All in, the post reached 4,645 people and generated:

  • 44 “Likes”
  • 27 shares
  • 20 comments
  • 3 page likes
  • Approximately 200 website clicks

The comments were quite engaging:

Every Facebook ad is given a Relevancy Score. Facebook rewards advertisers with highly engaging ads. If a high percentage of people engage with sponsored Facebook content, the reach (or visibility) of that campaign will be even greater. And the amount the advertiser pays will be lower.

A Snowball Effect

I paid an average of $0.23 to drive hundreds Facebook engagements such as likes, clicks, comments and shares.

When users engage with a sponsored post, it creates a free snowball (or multiplier) effect:

  • Friends of the people who engaged with the sponsored post may see the interaction in their feeds and engage with it.

Repeat this cycle a few times and a hot fake story can start trending on Facebook — for free.

Data Analysis: The Shockingly Low Cost of Buying an Election

Based on this data, we computed the cost to reach and the cost to engage with a number of people equal to the margin of victory in the swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania using Facebook Ads and fake news, as follows:

Facebook: Profiting from Fake News

The total cost of this test: $53.58.

My Facebook Fake News Experiment: Closing Thoughts

a) It’s still way too easy to become a fake news publisher on Facebook. They have a monopoly on determining the news that people see.

b) It’s remarkably cheap to push fake stories because they generate unusually high user engagement.

c) Fake news is effective and can alter public opinion both in the USA and in other countries worldwide where Facebook advertising costs are substantially lower.

Fake news via Facebook Ads is not a US partisan issue as fake news can come in any form. It seeks to exploit and undermine divisions within society and is a threat to global democracy.

Originally published in: medium.com