It's beyond coincidental that on Super Tuesday, when a third of the United States held a presidential primary, two of the world’s largest and most influential social media platforms went down. Facebook and Instagram motivate and sway voters. When taken in conjunction with Meta’s recent ban on “political posts,” it’s hard to believe last week’s hours-long outage was not a trial run for November.
With its nearly unlimited reach, social media has become the most important platform for politicians to advance their messages. Presidential election years are by far the most important — and most lucrative — for social media companies. Hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake. And that’s just for the political ads.
But ads are not where the money blitz begins and ends. Think of all the news shows, podcasts, and influencer posts, and the increase in content views due to peaked user interest during an election year. Now, think of the ads inserted in videos and on influencers' pages. The revenues can easily reach the billions, depending on the platform.
Now, here’s the trouble. In recent years, we’ve learned how Facebook and Twitter (now X) actively engaged in election interference and censorship. In fact, censorship is the mark for election interference, and we’ve seen this for a decade as conservative voices have been “shadowbanned” or throttled.