As I wrote about back in 2014 in this post, Facebook Can (and has) Manipulated You With Their Feed Algorithm, we already know that Facebook can manipulate it's audience just by tweaking their algorithm regarding what's displayed. In much of the discussion regarding Russian advertising during the election and the various fake accounts that were being run by these Russian interests, I haven't seen this referenced once in the media.
And yet, after I wrote this post on online advertising the other day (and after I had a chance to see some of the ads and other Russian programs released by Congress), a broader realization occurred to me.
While the 2014 research by Facebook involved Facebook tweaking their algorithm, what if, instead of tweaking the algorithm, you simply changed the nature of many of the resources that the algorithm drew from? In other words, if the core algorithm behaved neutrally, but the assets that it presented were broadly colored, it would probably have the same effect as changing the algorithm.
Again, back to the point that I wrote in the previous post -- it doesn't really matter whether people clicked on Russian ads or not. Their presence there worked to change the color of their target audience's feed on a much broader scale.
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