The Real Trouble With Trump’s ‘Dark Post’ Facebook Ads

Pandering to the base is a tradition as old as politics itself. But in the social media age, it’s easier than ever for politicians to take those tailored messages—the kind they might not like to share with the whole world—and disseminate them only to the people who are most likely to agree. And targeting allows campaigns to silo thousands of possible audiences with just a click, making it harder than ever to hold politicians accountable for all of it.

Some have taken to calling this type of ad a “dark post,” an overly nefarious name for what is, in actuality, just the way digital ads operate today. Technically speaking, Trump's ad buy works the same as one for the pair of Zappos shoes that somehow follows you around the internet. You’re seeing those shoes because Facebook thinks you're in the market for shoes. But President Trump isn’t running a shoe store; still less than a year into his term, he's already running a reelection campaign. And when the president sends one subset of the population a message that the rest of the population can’t see—especially one that's at odds with reality—it feels like a fundamental failure of government transparency.