Facebook and Google Helped Anti-Refugee Campaign in Swing States
Campaigns shouldn&#x27;t be discriminated on their political leaning, but there certainly is a responsibility for Facebook to moderate content that is patently false (e.g. the Islamic take-over of France) or could lead to the harm of others (e.g. hate speech).  All sides of politics are guilty of sensationalism and distortion, but that&#x27;s distinct from outright lies.<p>Facebook and Google could be forgiven for not having their eyes on all content that goes through their systems, but in this case they&#x27;ve actively assisted and paid special attention to questionable content.  Microtargeting is a relatively nascent form of political persuasion and has it&#x27;s own unique problems, foremostly that is largely opaque.  It stands in contrast to the national conversation playing out on just a handful of television and radio stations.  There&#x27;s no easy way to police the integrity of political campaigning when no one can see the larger picture.<p>There needs to be protections by the law, or perhaps clever hacker technologies, to protect people from being relegated to their own cul-de-sacs.  For instance, there&#x27;s no way for me to know for sure that everyone who visits this comments section is able to see what I&#x27;ve written.  This is a fundamental problem that the internet is facing and we all should be worried.