How can Facebook better design its political ads for 2020?
Why Facebook political ads?
Facebook received scrutiny for the influence of misinformation spread on its platform in the 2016 US presidential election. Misinformation and its potential to interfere with elections in the United States are incredibly important in 2020.
Technology companies should still take responsibility for how they allow their platforms to be used, and they have an obligation to stifle, or at least expose malicious intent. What can Facebook do with its ads UI design to create better transparency?
This is a brief case study of how Facebook might further distinguish political ads and posts that remain unchecked via their UI.
Facebook’s Current Policies
Facebook recently revised its policies surrounding social issues, elections, and politics this fall in light of the upcoming 2020 election. While Google and Twitter have restricted and banned political ads and targeting, respectively, Facebook has instead decided not to police political ads.
Policy
Advertisers can run ads about social issues, elections or politics, provided the advertiser complies with all applicable laws and the authorization process required by Facebook. Where appropriate, Facebook may restrict issue, electoral or political ads. (source)
Advertiser Authorization Process
- Verify identity (be page admin, have 2-factor authentication, show driver’s license, enter mailing address)
- Add disclaimer (must accurately reflect organization or person paying for ad; independently responsible for following the law)
- Link ad accounts (any account paying for the ad)
Here are a series of links to articles outlining concerns and policies:
- Google’s blog post outlining new policies (Google)
- Twitter’s post outlining new political ads policy (Twitter)
- Facebook’s post detailing political speech and elections (Facebook)
- NYT’s coverage of Zuckerberg’s decision(New York Times)
- Facebook employee letter to leadership on political ads (New York Times)
- Facebook political speech opinion (WSJ)
- Facebook usage facts (Pew Research)
Current UI Elements
I would encourage readers to scan through Facebook Design’s case studies, especially these pieces. They provide a very insightful look into how they currently design against misinformation.
How might we modify Facebook’s political ads in Newsfeed to increase trust?
Trust and transparency go hand-in-hand, and some initial inspiration came from Airbnb, Facebook’s past work, blockchain companies, and other sources.
While there are many values that engender trust, lower-level UI elements that frequently reoccurred included:
- Verification (i.e. badges, certifications)
- Social proof (i.e. likes, comments, etc.)
- Numbers (display ratings, # likes or supporters, etc.)
- Metadata (i.e. is paying for ads, what do they support, let users know what you’re doing/tracking from them, who are they targeting?)
It’s worth noting Facebook has already made substantial changes in the last three years since the 2016 elections. This includes creating the Ad Library, advertiser verification, and an enhanced “Why am I seeing this ad?”… but what else could we change about the card to make this information more accessible?
There are essentially three options when modifying any existing UI element: add, delete, or change. We must also consider the effort required by Facebook to implement changes, so we begin with the later.
1. Modifications
Talking with friends and family, there are mixed ideas about what the verification badge actually means and which elements on the screen were clickable.
In addition to the following strategies options, the use of nontrivial UI elements is equally important.
On Facebook, the blue “Confirmed Organization” icons are granted to advertisers who provide a US street address, phone number, business email, business website, and is either a tax-registered organization, government organization or FEC-registered organization (source).
Based on informal research testing three individuals 45–60 years old, older users tend not to understand the meaning of the blue verification badge, and many users don’t understand the discrepancies across social media platforms. Recent articles have been published on the confusion behind the “Amazon’s Choice” badge placed on products in the Amazon ecosystem.
2. Altering potential interactions
Should interactions with ads be the same as normal posts? Would users more clearly identify ads? Removing or restricting interactions with ads such as sharing could affect the potential for misinformation to go viral and call more attention to the source.
Are the tradeoffs worth it? Perhaps there is an in-between… Facebook fact-checks some non-political ads and asks users to confirm they want to share if two fact-checkers disagree on the accuracy of information.
3. Surfacing important information
Adding elements to existing cards requires more work, but can be implemented based on previous work or other design system elements. What could we add to make it easier for users to identify ads and learn more about the organizations/candidates posting them?
Many of the additions to these elements could be taken from or based on other designs created by Facebook. This could be from the Ad Library or past designs, like the above-post “Suggested Post” element…
As shown in the existing elements, there are many ways the newsfeed cards could bring important contextual information to the top—not hidden two layers deep in an icon or menu. In other words, the user might not have to dig for transparency, and consequently trust.
What might these solutions look like put together?
Here are some example cards and popups forged together given the aforementioned concepts.
And in context…
Other features
Some features not explicitly showcased that Facebook has already implemented and may benefit from some modifications include the display of additional context on news links and “Why am I seeing this ad?”
None of the five users I surveyed with newsfeed examples recognized it without the animation, which is not utilized on the desktop app for political ads. Additionally, the “Why am I seeing this ad?” might be better off shown on the card directly rather than nested.
Because this case study only consisted of five users tested and a simply Instagram survey to gauge whether people thought Facebook does a good job handling political ads, this clearly needs further investigation before any of this were to be truly implemented — the main idea is that it’s a decent start.
Generally speaking, we know Facebook does not intend to make sweeping overhauls to their UI to accommodate these issues. Instead, we have to nudge users will small, reasonable changes.
The aim is simply to empower the user with easy access to more and helpful information consistently and conveniently, without disrupting the interface or experience. This might mean Facebook should design and write more intentionally and admittedly when conveying the potential for misinformation on its platform, but the added transparency from these details might just pay dividends in a user’s trust of the platform long-term.
What do you think?
