Online platforms play an increasingly important role in shaping democracy by influencing the distribution of political information to the electorate. In recent years, political campaigns have spent heavily on the platforms' algorithmic tools to target voters with online advertising. While the public interest in understanding how platforms perform the task of shaping the political discourse has never been higher, the efforts of the major platforms to make the necessary disclosures to understand their practices falls woefully short. In this study, we collect and analyze a dataset containing over 800,000 ads and 2.5 million videos about the 2020 U.S. presidential election from Facebook, Google, and TikTok. We conduct the first large scale data analysis of public data to critically evaluate how these platforms amplified or moderated the distribution of political advertisements. We conclude with recommendations for how to improve the disclosures so that the public can hold the platforms and political advertisers accountable.
翻译：在线平台通过影响政治信息向选民的传播,在民主的形成过程中发挥着越来越重要的作用。近年来,政治运动在平台的算法工具上花费了巨资,以在线广告对选民进行定位。虽然公众对于了解平台如何履行塑造政治话语的任务的兴趣从未如此高过,但主要平台为了解其做法而进行必要的披露的努力却远远不够。在这项研究中,我们收集和分析了一个数据集,其中包含80多万个广告和250万个视频,内容是关于2020年美国总统选举的Facebook、Google和TikTok。我们首次对公共数据进行了大规模数据分析,以批判性地评价这些平台如何扩大或协调政治广告的发布。我们最后就如何改进披露工作提出建议,以使公众能够追究平台和政治广告商的责任。
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