The social media company Reddit has started publishing details about political advertising on its platform, following competitors Facebook and Twitter, which increased transparency on their platforms in response to alarm over “fake news” and foreign interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Reddit’s answer is a searchable database of political advertising on its website back-dated through 2019 that reveals advertisers, spending and details about where the advertisers want the ads to run on Reddit and where the users who advertisers want to reach are located.
The database is available on a dedicated webpage, the subreddit “r/RedditPoliticalAds,” which is run by the site’s administrators. The company also updated its political advertising policy to compel advertisers to work with Reddit’s sales team and leave comments “on” for ads in the first 24 hours of any ad campaign.
“We hope this update will give you a chance to engage directly and transparently with political advertisers around important political issues, and provide a line of sight into the campaigns and political organizations seeking your attention,” Reddit’s announcement says. “By requiring political advertisers to work closely with the Reddit Sales team, ensuring comments remain enabled for 24 hours, and establishing a political ads transparency subreddit, we believe we can better serve the Reddit ecosystem by spurring important conversation, enabling our users to provide their own feedback on political ads, and better protecting the community from inappropriate political ads, bad actors, and misinformation.”
Eric Wilson, a Republican digital strategist who worked for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign, said Reddit’s approach is more user-focused than Facebook and Google.
“It’s a good policy, it ensures transparency without causing any major disruptions to how advertisers [use] the platform,” Mr. Wilson said. “This is obviously a well-thought-out approach to transparency that respects the values of the Reddit community, which is central to the platform.”
Mr. Wilson has criticized Big Tech and particularly Facebook for pursuing solutions that focus on public perception instead of technical problems, and Facebook has solicited his input on company policies. Mr. Wilson said he had no discussion with Reddit about its policy changes beforehand, and he was impressed by the website’s emphasis on allowing users to comment and respond to political ads.
Reddit had enacted a fairly restrictive political advertising policy before this week’s changes. It blocked deceptive and untrue advertising, refused ads from advertisers and candidates outside the U.S., and only allowed ads at the federal level.
Each political ad on Reddit’s platform is “manually reviewed for messaging and creative content,” which differs from some of its competitors, which rely more heavily on automated and algorithmic approaches to screening content.
Reddit’s more individualized approach is partially attributable to the size of its user base: The company reports more than 430 million monthly active users, whereas Facebook reported having more than 2.5 billion monthly active users at the end of 2019.
Reddit’s audience is more organized than communities gathering on other social media sites. Reddit relies more upon users’ engagement within various subreddit communities to elevate content on its platform, while others such as Twitter rely more heavily on the recency of content posted. Facebook has historically relied greater on a user’s network of friends.
Reddit is also sharing details about who advertisers are excluding from their ad campaigns. When a political advertiser wants to eliminate a particular community or geographical location from its advertising campaign, Reddit will share that information with the public. Rather than only providing details about who sees a political ad, Reddit is also explaining which interest groups, digital communities and geographical locations were excluded.
• Ryan Lovelace can be reached at rlovelace@washingtontimes.com.
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