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What Does Facebook Messenger Mean For The Future Of Political Propaganda?

The ad tech powering messaging services offers advertisers—and bad actors—new ways to target and personalize content.

What Does Facebook Messenger Mean For The Future Of Political Propaganda?

[Illustration: Selman Design]

BY Ainsley Harris8 minute read

When Facebook first unveiled News Feed in 2006, its 10 million users threatened to revolt. In a matter of months, though, the redesigned product took off with users and, ultimately, advertisers. The familiar, blue-bordered scroll of news articles and baby pictures now reaches 2 billion people around the world and accounts for much of the company’s more than $30 billion in annual advertising revenue.

But in 2017, News Feed is more controversial than ever, under fire for reinforcing partisan viewpoints by creating social echo chambers, spreading misinformation, and, through its targeted advertising tools, possibly enabling election interference. As investigations unfold into how Russian intelligence operations manipulated Facebook, it’s clear that News Feed has become a political weapon capable of striking painfully close to home—and some users are rethinking its place in their lives.

The controversy exacerbates a more basic business problem for News Feed: Revenue growth has been falling every quarter for the past year, and Facebook executives have suggested to investors that News Feed capacity is, in part, the culprit. With ads already littering users’ feeds, there is dwindling real estate available for additional ones, and the quality of the experience is starting to suffer.

Amid this complex maelstrom of controversy and stuttering growth, Facebook has been increasingly turning its attention to another form of social interaction: messaging. Last year, for the first time, the world’s largest messaging platforms surpassed the world’s largest social networks in terms of monthly active users. Messenger, Facebook’s satellite app for private conversations, has 1.3 billion monthly users; WhatsApp, which Facebook acquired for $22 billion in 2014, has 1.3 billion monthly users of its own. Whether these platforms are the next big revenue spigot—or the next frontier of exploitation—may be one of the biggest questions facing Facebook’s future.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ainsley Harris is a senior writer at Fast Company. She has written about technology, innovation, and finance for the past 10 years, including four cover stories More


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