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Facebook finally hands over leave campaign Brexit ads

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Re: Facebook finally hands over leave campaign Brexit ads

#21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK has a regulator and rules about commercial advertising, but last I checked neither apply to political advertising. In normal elections there's often a row about some advert or other (eg the Tony Blair demon eyes poster) but nothing much comes of it. In this case there is a widespread view that the referendum was decided by misinformed voters and activists are trying to intervene on that basis to halt Brexit.

> misinformed voters I have this notion that EU votes are repeated the number of times necessary to have the 'informed' result win.

As an American, this is definitely what it looks like to me.

Re: Facebook finally hands over leave campaign Brexit ads

#22
post #3

Starting reading an article on some info handed over, ended up reading a politicized article. Can someone link me the source this article is using for the new news? I'm having a hard time finding it in the inline links of the text. EDIT: Via [0], I found the docs at [1]. Tech Crunch is a shameful, op-ed joke of a site. 0 - https://twitter.com/DamianCollins/status/1022437025667014656 1 - https://www.parliament.uk/docu…

Wow, quite a few of these are very xenophobic. Very much playing off of an anti Middle East sentiment.

I'd specifically like to highlight these ads in this document: https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/cultu....

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Re: Facebook finally hands over leave campaign Brexit ads

#23
post #16

It's disappointing, but not surprising, that the focus seems to be entirely on the "wrong" side of the "desired" outcome. At this point it amounts to fighting very hard to find any reason to undo a democratically determined result.

Given the fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, it's not really surprising that the connected companies and their actions are being paid close attention to, no. (Also, is Brexit really the politically "wrong" side, given the amount of political backing it had and has in the UK?)

Re: Facebook finally hands over leave campaign Brexit ads

#26

I'm trying to understand the article's premise. Is all political advertising immoral? Is it something about the way the ads were distributed that make them immoral? Is it just immoral because the politics itself was "wrong"?

People have received criminal convictions because of the way the campaigns were run.

ICO, the UK data protection regulator, has fined groups of both sides for data protection violations.

We have strict laws about the ways elections are run for a reason, and yes, lying about funding is immoral, and is incompatible with Nolan Principles for Public Office.

Re: Facebook finally hands over leave campaign Brexit ads

#27
post #16

It's disappointing, but not surprising, that the focus seems to be entirely on the "wrong" side of the "desired" outcome. At this point it amounts to fighting very hard to find any reason to undo a democratically determined result.

Democratic yes, but ludicrous. Setting up something as critical as that to have such a slim majority decide is illogical. The U.K. doesn’t seem to get referendums.

Important note however - they didn’t have a referendum to join the EU but maybe that’s covered by the one on joining the European Communities?

Re: Facebook finally hands over leave campaign Brexit ads

#28
post #16

It's disappointing, but not surprising, that the focus seems to be entirely on the "wrong" side of the "desired" outcome. At this point it amounts to fighting very hard to find any reason to undo a democratically determined result.

If just 1% of the population of the UK changed their voting intention (from Remain to Leave) because of illegally bought or misleading advertising, then undoing that effect would mean that Remain would have won.

Invoking the "democratically determined result" is begging the question, since we don't really know whether the result would have been the same if the Leave campaign hadn't broken the rules:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/04/vote-l...

When someone wins a sporting competition, and is found to have cheated by using banned substances, they don't get to keep their title by claiming "Well I still would have won even if I didn't cheat".

Re: Facebook finally hands over leave campaign Brexit ads

#29
post #16

It's disappointing, but not surprising, that the focus seems to be entirely on the "wrong" side of the "desired" outcome. At this point it amounts to fighting very hard to find any reason to undo a democratically determined result.

Because all these things (Brexit/Trump) wasn't planned to happen, so they're in need of arguments why a fair democratic vote should be invalid. This is what's happening.

Re: Facebook finally hands over leave campaign Brexit ads

#30
post #16

It's disappointing, but not surprising, that the focus seems to be entirely on the "wrong" side of the "desired" outcome. At this point it amounts to fighting very hard to find any reason to undo a democratically determined result.

If just 1% of the population of the UK changed their voting intention (from Remain to Leave) because of illegally bought or misleading advertising, then undoing that effect would mean that Remain would have won. Invoking the "democratically determined result" is begging the question, since we don't really know whether the result would have been the same if the Leave campaign hadn't broken the rules: https://www.thegu…

And technically it was advisory and has zero legitimacy there is also the question of gerrymandering the vote by not allowing brits overseas to vote.

This is like say ruling out any votes in a presidential election from expats and or military.

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