UNVEILING THE SHADOWS: THE SEDUCTIVE POWER OF FAR-RIGHT ADS ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Digital social media are now arguably the most potent means of shaping public opinion and – as political parties on the rise from both the Right and the Left increasingly realise – also of influencing voters. But what happens when this power is put at the service of controversial political forces like the far-Right in Germany? It raises an important question about how we define and ensure the boundaries of free speech vis-à-vis hate speech. The answer requires better, more nuanced thinking. Take the recent case of Germany’s far-Right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

THE EXPLOSIVE ALLEGATIONS AGAINST AFD’S SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGNS

Meanwhile, a detailed report by the advocacy group Ekō has brought to light the rampant use of hate speech in AfD political ads running on Facebook and Instagram – even though Meta’s policies prohibit hate speech. Ekō identified 23 ads placed by the AfD with more than 470,000 views collectively in the week following their publication – all of which could possibly have violated Meta’s own hate speech policy. The ads depict immigrants as threats to the safety and fiscal welfare of Germany in a way that’s consistent with the party’s ethno-nationalist ideology.

THE LINE BETWEEN FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND HATE PROPAGATION

Standing at the centre of a current scandal are a series of questions, chief among them: how much freedom of speech should we allow at the expense of the spread of hate speech? While Meta says that they do not allow hate speech on its platforms, users are able to see ads that clearly break their rules. ‘Our ads review process in France for ads directed at the whole of Europe and other countries is multi-layered and includes human review at several stages,’ a Meta spokesperson claims. ‘We do not allow hate speech on our platforms and have teams that proactively review ads for violations, as well as watching reports that come in from users.’ The scandal has raised questions over how effective the processes are, particularly in the weeks running up to the upcoming EU elections.

THE POWER OF TARGETED ADVERTISING IN POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS

The AfD’s strategy points to a more general tendency of political actors employing targeted ads to reach sympathetic audiences – a mechanism not just for mass communication but also for fine-tuning their narratives based on the interests and reactions of demographic segments. An efficient, albeit ethically problematic, campaign engine may thus prevail, whose workings might fall outside traditional media scrutiny.

META’S BATTLE WITH AI-GENERATED CONTENT AND POLICY ENFORCEMENT

Perhaps one of the best insights from Ekō’s work is showing the use of generative AI in creating these hyperemotional and polarising ads, and the threat it imposes on platforms such as Meta by adding to the difficulty of detecting manipulated content aimed at evading the existing barriers. In an ever-changing world of digital propaganda, with every leap forward in technology both enabling and unburdening the checks and balances embedded in systems, digital technologies will also continue to evolve and will include capabilities to detect and circumvent the AI tools being developed right at this moment.

THE ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN AMPLIFYING FAR-RIGHT NARRATIVES

It would be hard to seriously examine the rise of the AfD and other similar groups across the world without touching on social media: Facebook’s business model has been primarily about giving a voice to minorities or extreme positions and, by amplifying it for millions of people, making it a phenomenon. If printed media is understood as an agenda-setter in the classic sense, amplification – mass distribution through social media – has been a gamechanger in the political sphere. Minorities are reaching audiences they could never have reached before, giving them a voice and a sense of legitimacy that they could only dream of just a few years ago.

THE EU’S SCRUTINY OF META’S COMPLIANCE WITH DIGITAL REGULATIONS

And even as the company tries to navigate between being regulatorily handcuffed and content-moderation hamstrung, the attention of the European Union is making the battles that Meta wages (or decides not to wage) over disinformation evident. Through its proposed Digital Services Act, the EU wants greater say over how digital platforms moderate disinformation, while expressing greater fatigue with the self-regulation tropes.

UNDERSTANDING THE IMPLICATIONS OF STATUS IN POLITICAL DISCOURSE

Status is subtly but also forcefully operating here at the edges of the political campaigns that frame the immigration story as a matter of political loyalty. It’s a powerful tool for parties such as the AfD to stitch together folk-theoretic accounts of the relative status of ‘us’ and ‘them’. The politics of status thread issues of social identity, economic struggle and national integrity into a powerful and highly emotive and polarising political narrative.

The debates about the AfD’s social media adverts reflect wider concerns about status, social polarisation and the role of platforms such as Meta in assigning and reproducing it. In these new digital waters of our lives, navigating the tension between freedom and control, truth and deception is more urgent than ever. Looking at the status of the collective – of us – might well be the means to do so.