Rhode Island Rep. David Cicilline intends to introduce a bill next week that would outlaw microtargeting in online political advertisements.
Microtargeting is the practice of singling out groups of people based on personal information from their social media accounts. While some of the microtargeting traits are mundane, such as age and gender, other groups can be targeted based on their political interests, hobbies, and race.
Cicilline, a Democrat, said his new legislation would prohibit microtargeting from political advertisers on any characteristics except age, gender, and location. The congressman said he believes political microtargeting is a threat to democracy.
“Microtargeting is a threat to our democracy. Campaigns and foreign actors can use this technology to manipulate voters with high volumes of misleading information that is virtually impossible to keep track of,” Cicilline told The Hill. “The American people should choose their leaders, not sophisticated data firms or foreign adversaries that have their own agendas.”
Cicilline told Politico his legislation would prevent political advertisements from being published in an echo chamber where activists can post misleading information without worrying about being corrected.
“You lose the ability to be able to counter it in the open with a contrary assertion by someone else, because we don’t even know that people got those ads that said false things,” Cicilline said.
The legislation requires political advertisements to have a series of disclosures, including information on who paid for the advertisement, how much was spent, which groups were targeted, and who saw the post. The Federal Election Commission would have the authority to seek criminal penalties against platforms that fail to enforce the policy.
The policy would likely hit Facebook the hardest as the company dominates 60% of the political digital advertising market. Late last year, Twitter banned political advertisements altogether.
The subject of restricting political advertisements has sparked concern among Republicans who fear such policies limit free speech. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz commended Facebook late last year when the company announced it would not remove political advertisements, even if the content was misleading.
“Mark Zuckerberg is right … We should be defending free speech, not empowering a handful of Silicon Valley billionaires to control all public discussion,” Cruz said of the Facebook CEO at the time of the decision.
Cicilline said the narrow scope of his legislation protects free speech while zeroing in on advertising strategies he sees as a “real danger.”
“This is for a very specific kind of speech,” Cicilline said. “It’s very narrowly tailored to elections and to speech in the context of elections, and [Section] 230, of course, has applications to all speech on the internet, so that’s kind of a broader question.”
