Who Targets Me is a free browser extension that helps you learn more about the political ads you're targeted with online, and let's you contribute anonymously to research into their impact.
Politicians have always used misleading ads and campaign tricks to win votes. But because Big Tech enables campaigns to secretly launch thousands of ads at once, today’s voters are seeing ads that are more divisive and misleading than ever before.
Despite this, there’s still little systematic data on how individuals are targeted by campaigns.
We believe that these platforms have too much power over our civic conversations; that privately targeted political ads increase polarization and mistrust and that neither campaigns nor Big Tech will behave more responsibly without public pressure and transparency.
The browser extension gives you:
- A record of the political ads you're targeted with and why you see them
- Data about which parties and groups are targeting you most
- Data about which parties and groups are targeting your district most heavily
- Data about how many political ads there are vs. the total number of ads running at any given time
By tracking how campaigns are using Big Tech to privately target voters, we can contribute to reform of how politics is done, protect a fair democratic process and elections, and start to repair our national conversation.
------
Who Targets Me launched in the UK in 2017 and has since been run in over 20 countries around the world.
Our work has been covered by the BBC, New York Times, CNN and many others.
*How to use Who Targets Me*
- Install the browser extension
- Create an anonymous profile (your age, location, gender and political leaning)
- Choose which services you want to track your ads on
- Decide whether to participate in one of our research partnerships
- Use your social media platforms as usual
- Wait a while until you've seen some political ads (this is more likely during election campaigns)
- Click the plugin icon (or visit https://results.whotargets.me) from time to time to see who's trying to influence your views with political ads
What the plugin captures:
- Paid social media ads, their content and targeting and when you saw them
What the plugin doesn't capture:
- Any other type of post
- Any personal information or information about your social media accounts
You can choose to stop participating in the project at any time and, should you wish to, delete the ads you've contributed to the project.
The open source software is licensed under the MIT license:
https://github.com/WhoTargetsMe/Who-Targets-Me/blob/master/LICENSE.txt
