In Defense of Microtargeting: A Comment on Giles Howdle

This paper critically examines Giles Howdle’s (2023) view that microtargeting of political advertisements is morally problematic, regardless of the content of the ad. We offer three reasons to be skeptical of this conclusion: the wrongness of microtargeting is highly context-sensitive in a way that undermines Howdle’s strong thesis, the practice seems unlikely to affect voters in the way Howdle supposes, and the ads’ effectiveness in preventing deliberation is inversely proportional to how interesting and engaging their content is. We take these reasons to put significant pressure on Howdle’s argument in a way that renders his bold and novel claims unjustified by the considerations put in their favor.