State of Washington sues Facebook and Google over failure to disclose spending • Hacker News Board

Re: State of Washington sues Facebook and Google over failure to disclose spending

#161

Post by Retric » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 2:12 PM UTC

Lazare wrote: post #95

confounded wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But relatedly, money being treated as speech is antithetical to a functioning republic democracy.

Money is not speech, and courts do not treat it as such. The most famous recent case, Citizens United didn't even flirt with the notion. (Despite much commentary to the contrary, apparently from people who didn't read the decision.) Money does, however, enable speech, and restrictions on things which enable us to exercise fundamental rights is at least potentially a restriction on that right. That's the framework the…

Money forces people to listen which is inherently very different from speech.

And there are plenty of laws limiting speech for example in schools. So, outright limiting say TV advertising would be completely constitutional and have the side effect of limiting exactly the types of speech you're talking about without constitutional issues.

Re: State of Washington sues Facebook and Google over failure to disclose spending

#162

Post by Retric » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 2:15 PM UTC

wildmusings wrote: post #68

confounded wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But relatedly, money being treated as speech is antithetical to a functioning republic democracy.

So how do you get your message out without spending money? Do you only consider it freedom of speech if no one has a chance of hearing you? Spending money is how people with novel ideas expose it to more people and can hope to compete against established ideas that don’t need to be marketed.

Personal face to face communication does not cost money. So, the only thing being banned is paying other people to do something for you which does not seem like speech to me.

Further, there are many options out there which don't involve spending money to spread a message. Write a book and you can be paid to spread your message. If don't have the time a YouTube commentator can also get paid as can bloggers etc.

Granted saying ideas that can't spread virally can't spread at all may not be great. But, it does offer some forms of protection and IMO is more in spirit with the core idea of Democracy.

Re: State of Washington sues Facebook and Google over failure to disclose spending

#163

Post by SmellyGeekBoy » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 2:20 PM UTC

chrismcb wrote: post #131

hudibras wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is stopping that person from buying anything; they just have to register first.

So if you don't register, your free speech is abridged. The first amendment doesn't say you have to register before you are given free speech.

You also can't hand out legal or medical advice without being registered. Is that a violation of free speech?

Re: State of Washington sues Facebook and Google over failure to disclose spending

#164

Post by chaosite » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 2:31 PM UTC

inetknght wrote: post #160

asfasgasg wrote: post #98

> At least some of the many payments making up these results are not properly documented, and from the looks of it, this could amount to willful negligence. If a company is operating in a state and taking millions for political ads, it really can’t be unaware of that state’s disclosure laws. Seems to be overstating the case just a tad. Less than a million, in total, for Google at least. That's two or three engineer-y…

> Less than a million, in total, for Google at least. That's two or three engineer-years. Your estimates are not based on average salary anywhere that I'm familiar with.

Not salary, employee costs. But yeah, 250k$ salaries for engineers are uncommon even at Google.

Re: State of Washington sues Facebook and Google over failure to disclose spending

#165

Post by decebalus1 » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 2:31 PM UTC

beaner wrote: post #108

sverige wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTOH, if Google did not willfully fail to follow the law, does that mean they are simply incompetent? Local TV stations find a way to pay attention enough to comply, but Google can't?

Yes, that makes sense to me. Local businesses are much more likely to know the local laws. Google is everywhere, covering thousands of local places. It'd be hard to know all the different regulation.

> Google is everywhere, covering thousands of local places. It'd be hard to know all the different regulation.

And that's why you hire an army of compliance officers, which is what Google already has. There is no excuse.

Re: State of Washington sues Facebook and Google over failure to disclose spending

#166

Post by SamReidHughes » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 3:08 PM UTC

chasontherobot wrote: post #134

SamReidHughes wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is an excuse. Having to comply with all these regional laws to run an ad service has a chilling effect on speech. A small or large one, depending on compliance costs.

A chilling effect on running an ad service, maybe. Following the law is a cost of doing business.

A specific sales tax on newspapers is also cost of doing business. But it is unconstitutional. Making the law really complicated so that it's expensive to follow is the same thing. How can I make an online community and sell ads profitable (like some people I know that ran profitable forums) if I have to vet ads and follow laws of fifty states? The result of such laws being enforced is, these online communities cease to exist, and people aren't able to talk to each other.

Re: State of Washington sues Facebook and Google over failure to disclose spending

#167

Post by bmelton » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 3:18 PM UTC

ethbro wrote: post #158

bmelton wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it assumes that if it's bad when the federal government gets involved with something, it's equally bad when the state government gets involved Which in my opinion is a broadly false assumption, and ignores the very point of a federal republic, which is federalism. People in different states have different cultures, different norms, different geographies, different natural resources, different pastimes, different po…

How would you see greater recourse and more opportunity for remedy at the state level?

You have better representation. Federally, my Senator represents ~3 million constituents, while my House representative represents ~800k. At the state level, those numbers shrink from 3 million to 120,000, and from 800k to 40k.

If you live in a state that really believes in state representation, like New Hampshire or Vermont, then your representative likely only has 3 or 4 thousand constituents.

This means I can pop into their office and lodge complaints or show support in person, am more likely to talk to them in town halls, and I'm competing with fewer letters or phone calls for access. I've spoken in person to my state representatives many times on a variety of issues, but I've never gotten better than a (very much delayed) form letter from my federal representatives.

Past that, in many municipalities, your judges and DAs are often elected, meaning you have influence over the course and nature of their platforms. If you want to see criminal justice reform, less qualified immunity for police officers, etc., you have far more capacity for influence over state and local legislatures than you do at a federal level.

Re: State of Washington sues Facebook and Google over failure to disclose spending

#168

Post by s73v3r_ » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 4:18 PM UTC

bmelton wrote: post #80

ethbro wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you equate money spent on political advertising with votes (which I believe has strong empirical support), then failure to regulate inevitably devolves democracy into plutocracy. Assuming that's not desired, the question then becomes how best to balance free speech with equalizing commercial political speech.

And according to the Supreme Court, many times over, the very purpose of the first amendment is to protect speech, and the most important form of speech to protect is political speech. Yes, there are downsides to unfettered speech, but freedom means having to let other people do things I don't like, and in exchange, I can do things they don't like. If the problem is that money can buy unlimited federal power, then yo…

When they made that decision, multiple members of the court assumed there were proper disclosure regulations in place. There weren't.

"If the problem is that money can buy unlimited federal power, then you can limit the federal powers available for purchase without curtailing the freedom of the citizenry to engage in political speech as they choose."

And where do you think that power is going to go? It's not going to disapear into the ether.

Re: State of Washington sues Facebook and Google over failure to disclose spending

#169

Post by s73v3r_ » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 4:23 PM UTC

bmelton wrote: post #87

ethbro wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the problem is that money can buy unlimited federal power, then you can limit the federal powers available for purchase without curtailing the freedom of the citizenry to engage in political speech as they choose. I may be missing something obvious, but how do you suggest this could be done?

There are a lot of ways. For one, an adversarial congress is a feature, not a bug. We've seen already that as congress has become more polarized, lobbyist dollars have moved from federal to state in droves. Limit the scope and power of the Interstate Commerce Clause. Most modern interpretations are based on Wickard v. Fillburn's "Well, if everybody did it, it might affect interstate commerce" interpretation, which I…

"There are a lot of ways. For one, an adversarial congress is a feature, not a bug. We've seen already that as congress has become more polarized, lobbyist dollars have moved from federal to state in droves."

No, that is most certainly a bug. The rise of ALEC in power is in no way, shape, or form a "feature".

"Disallow regulatory bodies from having effective power to make laws."

They already do not have this power. They have the power that Congress delegated to them. And now, you're asking that Congress be the one to take up things like air quality regulations, or food safety regulations. Which, to be honest, has the same effect as saying that you don't want those things regulated at all.

Re: State of Washington sues Facebook and Google over failure to disclose spending

#170

Post by s73v3r_ » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 4:24 PM UTC

smsm42 wrote: post #99

ethbro wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you equate money spent on political advertising with votes (which I believe has strong empirical support), then failure to regulate inevitably devolves democracy into plutocracy. Assuming that's not desired, the question then becomes how best to balance free speech with equalizing commercial political speech.

> which I believe has strong empirical support What is that strong support? We routinely see very well-moneyed campaigns lose. In the very last election in the US the losing candidate outspent the winning one - if you look at Super-PAC spending (which is the one considered most "dark and dangerous", right?) the losing campaign had gathered 3x from the winning one ($189.4M against $59.3M). Somehow turned out having mo…

"We routinely see very well-moneyed campaigns lose."

We see it every so often, but I really don't think we see it often, and we don't see the very well moneyed campaign lose to a campaign run on a shoestring.