John Harris writes:

If you want to know why the worst president in US history currently stands a very good chance of winning again, consider a few facts. Donald Trump’s re-election campaign is already in full flow, brimming with cash, drenching social media with targeted ads, and reaping oceans of data on voters.

The impeachment drama is, predictably enough, the perfect opportunity to put out material that plays to the idea of Trump as a noble maverick, struggling against the liberal conspiracy implied by his online questionnaires: “Do you agree that President Trump has done nothing wrong? Do you believe the Democrats will try and make up LIES to impeach the president?”

The Democrats’ most likely challenger, by contrast, made headlines last year when he cut his online ad budget, and decided to concentrate on TV advertising: a very odd decision by Joe Biden, but there we are.

What really helps Trump is Facebook. Last October, it became clear that, whatever its collective remorse about the role it had played in Trump’s election three years before, Mark Zuckerberg’s company had quietly exempted advertising by parties and candidates from its regulations on truth and falsehood. After the flurry of criticism that followed, there was speculation that Facebook might shift – on both that policy, and the kind of micro-targeting of adverts that makes it almost impossible to scrutinise what a candidate is saying to voters, and why (the Trump campaign is currently reckoned to be launching more than 1,000 new micro-targeted Facebook ads every day).

But earlier this month there came confirmation that on these two crucial points, company policy was going to remain unchanged.

Cosmetically at least, some other internet giants have been tightening up. Not that it absolves Twitter of much of the blame for spreading hatred and misinformation – or indeed, hosting Trump’s personal feed – but in October last year it banned almost all political advertising. Again, Google is hardly free of responsibility for encouraging the worst kind of online politicking, but it has stopped political advertisers targeting people based on their political affiliation, and promised to take action against “demonstrably false claims”.

Facebook, by contrast, isn’t moving. [Continue reading…]