Home > Uncategorized > A natural experiment for Facebook

A natural experiment for Facebook

February 28, 2018

I wrote a Bloomberg View piece about something Facebook could probably do to determine if the Russian ads made a difference in the 2016 election:

Facebook Could Do a Lot More on Trump-Russia

The company could probably measure the effect of election-meddling if it wanted to.

 

For my complete list of Bloomberg View pieces, go here.

Categories: Uncategorized
  1. rsterbal
    February 28, 2018 at 10:24 pm

    The most important thing on Facebook was the activity of the Trump campaign as detailed by this 60 Minutes report: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-embeds-russia-and-the-trump-campaigns-secret-weapon/

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  2. James O'Keefe
    March 1, 2018 at 10:04 am

    Interesting idea. Would think Facebook would need to control for other correlated factors as well such as Trump campaign ad buys, but perhaps dividing the samples into the two groups you mention would correct for that.

    If I read you right, your test would see whether people were more likely to vote based on the Russian-sponsored ads. Considering that voter suppression was also attempted, it would be good to check for that effect as well.

    Thanks for suggesting it.

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