{"id":41733,"date":"2023-10-20T15:16:06","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:16:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/can-facebook-influence-an-election-result-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:16:06","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:16:06","slug":"can-facebook-influence-an-election-result-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/can-facebook-influence-an-election-result-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Facebook influence an election result? – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By Michael Brand<\/em><\/p>\n
Facebook was in hot water this May over allegations of a liberal bias in its \u201cTrending\u201d topics feature.<\/p>\n
This was not the first time Facebook had been accused of covertly meddling with politics.<\/p>\n
In 2012, Facebook took heat for tweaking the news feed of 1.9 million users for increased political content.<\/p>\n
And in 2014, following a 689,000-person experiment in emotion manipulation, Clay Johnson, the co-founder of Blue State Digital, the firm that built and managed Barack Obama\u2019s online campaign for the presidency in 2008, asked:<\/p>\n
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Could Mark Zuckerberg swing an election by promoting Upworthy [a website aggregating viral content] posts two weeks beforehand? Should that be legal?<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
But Facebook\u2019s most powerful political tool may be one that\u2019s hiding in plain sight. Consider the \u201cI Voted\u201d button.<\/p>\n
The button, dubbed by Facebook a \u201cvoter megaphone\u201d, allows users to report whether they have voted and shows which of their friends have also voted.<\/p>\n