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Zurawik: Presidential campaign messaging war: It’s ugly and going to get worse

This combination of images shows logos for companies from left, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. Social media companies are failing to stop manipulated activity, according to a report Friday, Dec. 6, 2019 by NATO-affiliated researchers who said they were easily able to buy tens of thousands of likes, comments and views on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram. Most of the phony accounts and the activity they engaged in remained online weeks later, even after researchers at the NATO Strategic Command Centre of Excellence flagged it up as fake. (AP Photos/File)
This combination of images shows logos for companies from left, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. Social media companies are failing to stop manipulated activity, according to a report Friday, Dec. 6, 2019 by NATO-affiliated researchers who said they were easily able to buy tens of thousands of likes, comments and views on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram. Most of the phony accounts and the activity they engaged in remained online weeks later, even after researchers at the NATO Strategic Command Centre of Excellence flagged it up as fake. (AP Photos/File) This combination of images shows logos for companies from left, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. Social media companies are failing to stop manipulated activity, according to a report Friday, Dec. 6, 2019 by NATO-affiliated researchers who said they were easily able to buy tens of thousands of likes, comments and views on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram. Most of the phony accounts and the activity they engaged in remained online weeks later, even after researchers at the NATO Strategic Command Centre of Excellence flagged it up as fake. (AP Photos/File)

By David Zurawik / The Baltimore Sun via Tribune News Service 3 min read

If you are concerned about the way smears, lies, character assassination and disinformation have polluted the conversation of American civic life, brace yourself. It’s going to get worse as Team Trump punches back on Facebook and YouTube against the Democratic ticket of former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris.

The New York Times was the first to report an advertising buy made by the president’s campaign team to saturate Facebook, YouTube and other digital sites with pro-Trump, anti-Biden content last week. The tab could run as high as $10 million for an effort that will include taking over the banner on the YouTube homepage and forcing YouTube users to wade through pre-roll, Trump-bought content before getting to play the video they came to see. That campaign started Tuesday, the second day of the digital Democratic convention.

But you didn’t have to wait until the convention started to see what Team Trump would be saying on Facebook and YouTube. A crush of ads paid for by Donald Trump for President, Inc. appeared on Facebook before the event started.

“Joe Biden MEANS 11 MILLION Illegal Immigrants competing for American jobs. They will all be eligible for FREE health care, Social Security and Medicare. America CANNOT afford Joe Biden,” one ad begins.

Those words along with a picture of Trump appear over a large depiction of Biden and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with the headline: “JOE BIDEN PUT A SOCIALIST IN CHARGE OF HIS ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT PLAN.”