Very good point. Social media platforms were held up a shining example because Obama's message was largely positive, but few stopped to think about the flip side of the scenario... until 2016.

"positive"

That's subjective. Something that sounds nice and upliftung may not actually be positive in the long run while something that sounds negative may indeed be necessary.

Which proves the point that opposition to online political advertising is not rooted in some deep and profound moral principle, but is merely a response to one's favored "side" being outmaneuvered by opposition candidates' deft use of online tools and advertising.

Moral shallowness is masquerading as righteousness on the Left, but many have convinced themselves that the masquerade is genuine.

Greed and hubris is masquerading as reason and „telling it like it is“ on the Right but many have convinced themselves that the masquerade is genuine.

Just doing some balancing here.

I don't disagree with you.

Facebook and the Internet were a bit different in 2008 than they were in 2016. Facebook had fewer than 150m active users and they skewed young. The "news" feed was actually stuff your friends posted and using social media for a political campaign was novel.

Fast forward to 2016 where Facebook has two billion active users, a majority of whom use their location/behavior tracking app. They also have 12 years of user extremely detailed user graphs and own a significant percentage of online advertising (tracking). Their business model has also changed to specifically sell microtargeted ads. They've also resisted all types of regulation of political advertising.

There were misgivings about social media political advertising in 2008 but up to that point social media was just crowd sourcing of bullshit. Since 2008 it's become far less social and really just become a big advertising vector. Whatever misgivings anyone had about it would have vastly underestimated its impact.

Thanks. I have to make this point on HN just about every time Facebook ads come up. It absolutely blows my mind that something so prominent can be intentionally forgotten so quickly. I was very young in 2008 and even then I easily noticed this.