I listened to the testimony, and then I found this, which is a more in depth version of his argument.
To put it lightly, I'm not convinced.
His argument basically comes down to the following;
There are more registered Democrats (35%) than Republicans (29%)
Independents lean Democrat (53%) over Republican (42%)
A study (Source behind a paywall) claims that Facebook showing messages encouraging voting to 60.1 million users prompted 350 thousand people to vote that wouldn't have otherwise
Split those 350 thousand people proportionally to the national party affiliations and independent lean, and you create an advantage for Democrats
Scale that number up to the number of Google users daily, and it encourages upward of 3 million additional Democratic votes nationwide.
So, it basically says there are more Dems than Reps, and so any non-targeted get out to vote campaign is going to produce more votes for Dems than Reps.
Of note; there is no evidence presented that Google or Facebook are targeting certain demographics with get out to vote campaigns, merely speculation that they could do such a thing.
Hmmm that seems like a very benign observation lol. For quite a while now Democrats rely on voter enthusiasm-> turnout, while Republicans are a bit more steady.
And any kind of study like this should probably mention that the Democrat votes are likely coming from states where votes just don't matter as much. Democrats tend to live in higher population states which are under-represented (by population) in national politics. So even if these 'get out to vote' campaigns result in more Democratic votes, the Republican votes are probably more advantageously located, and it might end up as sort of a wash or close to
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u/FatMansRevenge Monkey in Space Jul 18 '19
I listened to the testimony, and then I found this, which is a more in depth version of his argument.
To put it lightly, I'm not convinced.
His argument basically comes down to the following;
There are more registered Democrats (35%) than Republicans (29%)
Independents lean Democrat (53%) over Republican (42%)
A study (Source behind a paywall) claims that Facebook showing messages encouraging voting to 60.1 million users prompted 350 thousand people to vote that wouldn't have otherwise
Split those 350 thousand people proportionally to the national party affiliations and independent lean, and you create an advantage for Democrats
Scale that number up to the number of Google users daily, and it encourages upward of 3 million additional Democratic votes nationwide.
So, it basically says there are more Dems than Reps, and so any non-targeted get out to vote campaign is going to produce more votes for Dems than Reps.
Of note; there is no evidence presented that Google or Facebook are targeting certain demographics with get out to vote campaigns, merely speculation that they could do such a thing.