The other political advertising problem

... and how to deal with it

Events, such as the public debate and violence seen in the UK over the last week surrounding Henry Nowak’s murder, live inside structures.

One persistent, still unsolved structural issue is political advertising. Who Targets Me’s work focuses primarily on what so-called “elite actors” do around elections, where most ad spending happens. Campaigns buy ads and target voters in the hope of winning. We have worked towards greater transparency and accountability for these messages for nearly a decade.

But a large part of the current information crisis is driven by another form of paid communication, “blue tick” creator programmes, where accounts receive algorithmic promotion and payments in exchange for producing content that attracts attention, including about politics. These actors, often individuals, increasingly shape the information people encounter, the political conversations they have and, ultimately, their electoral behaviour.

Both election advertising and creator programmes use money and distribution to encourage the production of political content. The former is subject to spending limits and platform transparency, while the latter system receives relatively little scrutiny. This must change. If you reach millions of people a month, you should be more transparent than a local newspaper reaching thousands, not less.

All major platforms offer creator programmes, though X’s is most notorious. The “social media” of 2010-2020 still exists, in that we continue to see content produced by friends and family, but “the platform feed” as something made of videos, images and text produced by these professional or semi-professional creators is now dominant. X, Facebook, Instagram (particularly Reels), TikTok and YouTube Shorts all work in this way, with Britons spending tens of millions of hours per week using these services.

Despite existing for several years, and competing with ‘serious’ forms of political communication (print and broadcast media), governments and platforms have so far shown little interest in trying to comprehensively account for the impacts of this newer form of paid, “always on” communication. Unlike the advertising currently running in Makerfield, “blue tick” content isn’t constrained by election law or campaign periods, nor is there a vote at the end to decide who won.

To deal with this, the country needs new policy instruments that adequately account for the mismatch between individual incentives and the wider social good. Consumption is downstream of creation. The more platforms reward the production of divisive, sensational or emotionally manipulative content, the more of it will be created. The person filming outside an asylum hotel, provoking confrontations in a town centre, posting conspiratorial political commentary or recycling misleading information is not just expressing a view, but participating in an economic system that rewards attention. If we change the incentives, the information environment will change too.

Platforms tend to argue that content reflects public demand rather than the incentives they have created. This follows from a familiar tech industry mantra: “make things people want, not make people want things”. Demand undoubtedly matters. But supply matters too.

Much contemporary political content creation is a commercial activity. Creators compete for attention, influence and market share using promotional techniques such as thumbnail design, clipping, search optimisation and cross-promotion. When they succeed, they are rewarded with reach, status and money.

In this respect, monetised political content increasingly resembles a form of competitive marketing. The goal is not simply to express a view, but to persuade people to pay attention to one account rather than another. They are saying, in effect, “hear me, not them”.

Below, we set out supply-side regulatory ideas that would have significant positive impacts on a range of persistent contemporary social and political problems. These include platforming extremist politics and online racism, polarisation, unwanted foreign influence, social media addiction, financial and other scams and harmful disinformation, such as about health.

These systemic proposals aren’t designed to defeat the ideas themselves. People will still be able to produce whatever content they want, assuming it is within platform rules and doesn’t break the law. Instead these new rules would level the playing field for all content, by reducing the incentives to create extreme political content for attention and financial reward, while putting meaningful new burdens of responsibility on creators to act in good faith.

Currently, content moderation and removal isn’t dealing with these issues, nor is media literacy, nor fact checking. The online safety regime is nascent. Each, designed around the demand side of the information economy, has value, but none reflect the way things have changed, namely the economic incentives rewarding the supply of divisive content.

---

Five ideas to ensure “blue tick” programmes serve society, not just individuals

1. Like “normal” political advertising, “blue tick” accounts need transparency

It should be easy for users to understand the context of the information they’re being presented with by “blue tick” accounts. With one click or tap, you should be able to see the country of origin of the account, account type, other accounts controlled by the same person or organisation, a breakdown of which topics the account posts on, their total reach by country, their follower and engagement growth over time, how much money they make from creator payouts and other in-platform monetisation mechanisms (e.g tips and donations, subscriptions), reach from followers and non-followers, how often the account has been fact-checked plus their history of fact-checks, community notes, platform policy violations and content strikes and a list of their top posts by reach and monetisation. You should also be able to download an annual “transparency report” for any “blue tick” account, summarising all of the above information.

2. Ban small payouts for political content

Small payouts allow political creators to a) get a taste of monetisation, enrolling them in as participants in the market and b) provide a feedback function about the performance of their efforts, allowing them to tweak their content in order to find the best algorithmic wave to ride. Setting an annual threshold (say £5,000) for minimum payouts to UK political creators would mean a smaller raw number of accounts generating income from divisive political content, driving out the incentive to “try it and see”. The threshold may also increase overall quality, as accounts plan for the long term, rather than copy and amplify others’ outrage to win a share of the pie.

There is clearly a trade-off here. Some valuable creators would certainly lose access to monetisation. The question is whether the benefits of maintaining a vast market for semi-professional political content outweigh the costs. We don’t believe they do.

Note that none of this stops people making money from political content online. These ideas aren’t designed to and won’t stop creators asking for subscriptions, donations, sponsorships or other forms of support. The difference is that these methods allow audiences to choose which creators to support, whereas platform payout systems allow algorithms to make this decision.

3. Ban additional promotion for “blue tick” political and social issue content

Accounts participating in “blue tick” programmes should see no additional reach for political and social issue content. Positive weighting for posts, replies and engagement by “blue tick” accounts is a particularly opaque form of paid political promotion and should not be permitted.

Ending this mechanism would reduce the incentive to post things that are outrageous or untrue in return for additional engagement and attention. This is particularly the case where smaller “blue tick” accounts try to catch the attention of larger ones (e.g. by replying to everything they post) in order to build their reach, followers and revenue.

More broadly, it would lower the value of being part of a wider influence network, helping ensure that political content succeeds or fails on its merits rather than because its creator belongs to a privileged distribution programme.

4. Impose accreditation and professional obligations on political and social issue creators

Political creators participating in “blue tick” programmes should meet minimum accreditation standards. Depending on account size and reach, this could include training covering legal responsibilities, platform rules, transparency obligations and standards of conduct. These schemes should be substantive and independent, but funded by the platforms.

It’s important to be clear that the primary purpose here is not educational, but instead to create meaningful obligations and costs associated with participation in the monetised political content market. These requirements should increase with reach, making it progressively harder to operate multiple accounts, engage in cross-amplification, or simply replace a banned or demonetised account with a new one.

Much as professional qualifications and licensing requirements shape participation in other markets, accreditation would add friction to an activity that has very low barriers to entry. Such obligations don’t restrict speech, but instead send a strong signal that reach, influence and payouts come with responsibilities.

5. Create a new regime for systemically important accounts

Very large political creator accounts (e.g. above a reach threshold determined by regulators) would be designated as “systemically important” and be subject to a code of conduct and the responsibilities you’d expect from a more traditional media outlet (corrections, disclosure and full cooperation with regulators).

This principle already exists elsewhere. Banks, utilities and technology platforms face additional obligations when they become systemically important because their actions affect many millions of people. The same should apply to political creator accounts whose online reach and influence have grown beyond that of some of the traditional media outlets they compete with.

---

Conclusion: Regulate incentives, not content

Generally, it’s accepted that election campaign activity requires transparency and accountability because money shapes political communication. It is time to recognise that creator programmes do the same.

The outcomes of new regulation should be to:

• Reduce the supply (and therefore the impact) of divisive, unaccountable monetised political content.

• Increase transparency, responsibility and accountability for those producing professional political content on social media.

• Protect free expression by avoiding expansion of the content moderation regime or online safety rules.

The problem we face is not inherently the fact that people can and do say controversial things online. It is that our information ecosystem is now built on economic rewards for the production of outrage, division and extremity. To date, there has been too much focus on the specifics of what people say and too little on the incentives encouraging them to say it.

Formal political advertising is regulated because we understand that money influences political communication and behaviour. Creator programmes are an “always on” version of the same phenomenon. If we want a calmer, more truthful and more accountable internet, we should start by regulating the incentives that shape it.

---