"'We have three major voter suppression operations under way,' says a senior official.

They’re aimed at three groups Clinton needs to win overwhelmingly: idealistic white liberals, young women, and African Americans."

Bloomsberg reporting in 2016. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-27/inside-the-trump-bunker-with-12-days-to-go

i.e. can someone help me understand what's new about the latest Cambridge Analytica "revelations"?

And whether there's really any new takeaways we should draw from them?

Bloomberg, 2016.

NB it goes on: "Furthermore, there’s no scientific basis for thinking this ploy will convince these voters to stay home. It could just as easily end up motivating them."
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-27/inside-the-trump-bunker-with-12-days-to-go

In 2016, following an extensive array of voter suppression techniques (purging voter roles; requiring IDs; slashing the number of early voting sites in Indiana & N. Carolina), the black vote did indeed drop -- though only to pre-Obama levels, and still historically high.

We might reasonably say: "Facebook should not allow political campaigns to run voter deterrence ads" - but this isn't uniquely a Facebook problem.

In not allowing this type of advertising this year, Facebook is presumably *better* than radio, news & TV?

We might LIKE to say that "Facebook should never have allowed political ads to be targeted by race"

But the new data reveals that the ads weren't targeted by race (ie 100% black) but rather targeted by something (voter intentions) that correlated w/ race
https://www.channel4.com/news/revealed-trump-campaign-strategy-to-deter-millions-of-black-americans-from-voting-in-2016

Non-ad people are then going to say "This shows that all ad targeting is bad!"

Then a plumber can't show ads to a local neighbourhood, or a bike shop to an audience interested in cycling -- bc a) that's targeting, and b) those audiences will have some correlation w/ race.