Donald Trump’s campaign director credits Facebook 'embeds' with electoral success
The digital director behind president Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign has singled out Facebook as the social network most critical to Trump’s electoral success.
Donald Trump’s campaign director credits Facebook for electoral success
Brad Parscale claimed to have hand-picked pro-Trump employee ‘embeds’ who were in regular attendance at his office to advise on the best way to exploit these tools. Speaking to 60 Minutes he lavished praise on Facebook’s targeted messaging, saying: “Twitter is how [Trump] talked to the people, Facebook was going to be how he won.”
Playing down these claims, a Facebook spokesman responded that it offered the same services and guidance that it would offer to any other large-scale advertiser but the claims will add further questions to the services neutrality amid revelations that Russia spent at least $100k on political messaging during the same campaign.
There is nothing incorrect about Facebook offering its services in this way to the Republicans but under Federal Election Law must provide the same training and services to any client spending similar amounts.
Nevertheless such revelations are highly discomfiting for the social media powerhouse amidst a highly charged political atmosphere in the US, undermining recent efforts by Mark Zuckerberg to draw a line under the affair by hiring more editors to tackle 'fake news'.