https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/26/17055666/facebook-trump-ads-parscale-pennies-clinton-digital

Did Facebook’s ad platform give Donald Trump an unfair advantage in the 2016 election? That’s a question I tried to answer last October, when I looked at how the dynamics of the ad platform can promote more polarizing ads. It came up again over the weekend, as more people digested Antonio García Martínez’s op-ed in Wired, which examines the same issue. Here’s how he put it:

During the run-up to the election, the Trump and Clinton campaigns bid ruthlessly for the same online real estate in front of the same swing-state voters. But because Trump used provocative content to stoke social media buzz, and he was better able to drive likes, comments, and shares than Clinton, his bids received a boost from Facebook’s click model, effectively winning him more media for less money. In essence, Clinton was paying Manhattan prices for the square footage on your smartphone’s screen, while Trump was paying Detroit prices. Facebook users in swing states who felt Trump had taken over their news feeds may not have been hallucinating.