Two Villains in the Room: Microtargeting and Unawareness
First up: microtargeting. This is the practice where political interest groups (basically, anyone trying to sway your vote) gather mountains of data on you—what you click, what you share, even what you whisper into the internet void—and craft a message designed precisely to hit your nerves.
Think of it as political whispering, custom-fitted to each citizen's private hopes and fears.
Next: voter unawareness. Once upon a time, you got your news from recognizable faces and familiar newspapers. Now, news is fed to us through Facebook posts, search engine results, or news aggregators, where it’s often impossible to tell who’s behind a story.
It's a buffet of information with all the labels scraped off.
Combine these two forces, and you have the perfect conditions for chaos: voters receiving personalized, often misleading information without any idea who sent it or why.
Who Gets Hurt, and How
Van Gils and company show, through their model, that microtargeting and unawareness don't hurt all voters equally.
- Radicals (people already deeply committed to one political side) are hurt most by microtargeting. They stop trusting any news because they know they're being manipulated. Ironically, the loudest partisans may end up the most jaded and information-starved.
Moderates (those sweet, swayable middle-grounders) are devastated by unawareness. Moderates want information. They’re willing to be persuaded. But if they can’t tell whether the information is coming from a reliable source, they sometimes trust lies and sometimes reject truths. Democracy depends on moderates making informed decisions, and unawareness robs them of that chance.
And here’s the kicker: while microtargeting makes voters more cynical, only unawareness can flip an election. That is, change who wins. That’s not just theoretical.
If enough moderates are fooled or confused, the whole system tilts.
The Best and Worst-Case Scenarios
The researchers rank the different combinations of news delivery:
- Public news with sender awareness: Best case. Voters know who’s talking and can judge credibility.
Microtargeting with awareness or public news with unawareness: Middling. Some dangers, but manageable.
Microtargeting with unawareness: Worst case. Voters are individually manipulated and have no idea who’s pulling the strings.
Guess where we are today? Squarely in Door #3.
Most people get their news through platforms that allow microtargeting without clear labeling.
It's the informational equivalent of walking blindfolded through a carnival funhouse, only the "fun" part is optional.
What We Could Actually Do About It
Now, if this were just another "tsk-tsk, democracy is in trouble" piece, we could all sigh and move on.
But the authors offer actual, realistic interventions:
- Label the news sender: Platforms like Facebook, Google, and Twitter (or X, or whatever Elon is calling it this week) should be required to reveal not just who "posted" something, but the real-world interest group that originated it. Think "Paid for by Friends of Big Oil" flashing next to every ad about why climate change is a hoax.
Promote competition among information sources: If voters get news from lots of places, it’s harder for any one interest group to dominate their view of reality. Think less monopoly, more market bazaar.
These are refreshingly practical suggestions. No utopian calls to "fix human nature."
Just "make the source clear" and "make the market work better."
The Quiet Existential Threat
One of the more subtle but devastating points the article makes is this: even perfectly rational, intelligent voters can be manipulated under the current system. You don’t have to be gullible.
If you can't tell who’s speaking to you, your best decision-making processes are hijacked.
And if rational voters can be led astray, then the whole project of democracy—the idea that informed citizens can govern themselves—starts to look less like a beacon of hope and more like a Potemkin village.
In a footnote (always read the footnotes, kids), the authors note something particularly haunting: if voter unawareness increases over time—say, because social media becomes even more dominant—we should expect fewer moderates and more radicals.
Translation: more people shouting, fewer people listening, and an electorate easier to swing with a few well-placed lies.
The Story We’re Living
Ultimately, van Gils, Müller, and Prüfer are telling us that the story we’re living is not one of a sudden democratic collapse, but of a slow, often invisible erosion.
Not a coup, but a seep. Not a villain twirling a mustache, but a hundred interest groups tweaking algorithms in dark rooms.
In the end, democracy might not die because we were uninformed. It might die because we thought we were informed—but couldn’t tell we were being fed poisoned candy.
And the fix, while difficult, is at least conceptually simple: demand that every piece of political information comes with a label.
In a world full of invisible persuaders, the simple act of showing your face could save us all.
Source: Microtargeting, voters’ unawareness, and democracy - Freek van Gils , Wieland Müller , Jens Prüfer
The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, https://doi.org/10.1093/jleo/ewae002
Published: 19 February 2024
