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We posed as 100 Senators to run ads on Facebook. Facebook approved all of them

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Re: We posed as 100 Senators to run ads on Facebook. Facebook approved all of them

#231

Post by poooogles »

jjeaff wrote: post #206
amichal wrote: post #98

I am appalled at how bad Facebook did here but buried at the very end of the article Vice does indicate that they needed to provide a valid traceable drivers license and last four of a (maybe?) matching SSN. This means that had they intended to actually publish the ads they would have put some real person on the hook (assuming the submitted data is actually checked against something). Still too easy but for the first…

Seeing as Experian leaked every single SSN in America to hackers, I'd say a SSN is a very small hurdle. Even if it had to match, which I'm sure it does not have to match the disclosure name - just the name of the payor.

>Experian

Don't you mean Equifax? Or have I missed something. Google doesn't show anything interesting...

Re: We posed as 100 Senators to run ads on Facebook. Facebook approved all of them

#232

Post by bryanrasmussen »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #214
Zyst wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In order to run a “Paid for by” disclosure on Facebook, you must first submit the name to the company for approval, along with an image of a valid driver’s license and the last four digits of your Social Security number. Paragraph in question. Are the driver's licences they used not the ones of the Senators? Or maybe they photoshopped them, or something along those lines? I'm a bit unhappy at the lack of elaboration…

That they say a valid driver's license makes it sound like it doesn't have to be the senator in question's.

Hi, my name is John Validdriver and I work for senator Schmuck's office!

Re: We posed as 100 Senators to run ads on Facebook. Facebook approved all of them

#234

Post by dillondoyle »

r_singh wrote: post #218
dillondoyle wrote: post #209

I buy political ads as a big part of our business. This cycle, FB is FAR easier to work with than Google. I get the sense that FB simply wants to pass off the liability to ad buyer (who signed an affidavit to run those paid for ads... and Vice broke that contract but also probably the law). Whereas Google is giving huge problems for basically all our clients because they seem to be doing manual DD. Not focusing on wh…

It's interesting to hear your thoughts as a person whose work requires to interface with the political-ad-vetting process of web giants. If you were a representative of the public (with interests in safeguarding the authenticity of information promoted to individuals of the public), would you endorse a difficult google like vetting process or a superficial, lenient vetting process adopted by Facebook?

I can understand the public interest.

I wouldn't mind a vetting process that works; google's just doesn't at least for us. The time not up with ads === censoring political speech IMHO and to me political speech is sacrosanct. The tradeoff isn't worth it.

But also I have probably an extreme view out of the norm for most here. I view politics as almost capitalistic (not just in that I make money doing it) but that it's a competition of ideas, attention, advertising etc. So despite being pretty strong D I value an 'open arena' even if open to abuse. I feel the same for non-paid content. Attempts to 'vet' or label content as factual or biased seem to all have problems or are game-able and for me personally I don't think it's worth the trade off. Though in my 'theory' of political competition I acknowledge it's very hard to fight back against 'fake' and nation-state opponents. Again, I'm probably extreme here but I do understand the public interest argument.

Re: We posed as 100 Senators to run ads on Facebook. Facebook approved all of them

#235

Post by narzu »

eridius wrote: post #148
andrewflnr wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's probably one of the only people they could actually be sure wasn't buying Facebook ads. Whereas a senator buying Facebook ads is, in itself, quite likely. Not really a fair comparison.

So what you're saying is, because a senator could conceivably be running ads, then any ad that claims to be by a senator should be approved without scrutiny? Besides being preposterous, that same argument applies to literally anybody in the world except, I guess, Mark Zuckerberg. So it sounds like Facebook's algorithm for detecting abuse is `if submitter == "Mark Zuckerberg" { reject(); }`

Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize.

Re: We posed as 100 Senators to run ads on Facebook. Facebook approved all of them

#236

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

bluecalm wrote: post #51
hadrien01 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how it's done in my country, France: candidates can't pay for political ads. They have equally-sized and free-to-use billboards in front of public buildings [0] and a free one-minute-and-a-half-per-day ad space on public television [1]. That's it. [0] http://dspagnou.celeonet.fr/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/degra... [1] For fun, the 2017 ads: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n__Il8Z7lrg

Can they pay for their own website? What about a website about their ideas? What about linking to that website? Limiting speech like that sounds dystopian. It's sure great for established players though as they are already known and get a lot of air time anyway while the competition can't even pay to try to convince others to their ideas.

> It's sure great for established players though as they are already known and get a lot of air time anyway while the competition can't even pay to try to convince others to their ideas.

Odd that you'd make this point on a comment about France. Perhaps read up on Macron some time.

Re: We posed as 100 Senators to run ads on Facebook. Facebook approved all of them

#237

Post by dschuetz »

I don't understand. What is expected from Facebook concerning political ads? Should Facebook do the work of fact checking on behalf of viewers, instead of users fact checking on their own? Why is it that actual fact checking is being outsourced to social media companies (due to fear of foreign influence)? Should we also outsource voting too then?

Re: We posed as 100 Senators to run ads on Facebook. Facebook approved all of them

#238

Post by specialist »

evo_9 wrote: post #80
hadrien01 wrote: post #33

The best solution, and currently in effect as law in many European countries, would be to stop political ads altogether on Facebook and the Web. No more "hey who is paying for that anti-XXX political ad?", they just wouldn't exist anymore. Plus, less money raised and spent by political campaigns. Also, this article comes just one week after that one: "Facebook’s political ad tool let us buy ads “paid for” by Mike Pen…

I think it should go further - ban all political ads, period. They do more harm than good, are mostly designed to confuse and obscure the topics and/or candidate(s). Instead of ads have the politicians debate on live TV to express their political views. Post the debates online for everyone to watch at their leisure. Leave the measures/proposals to us to research; in Colorado we get an excellent voter guide that clear…

I believe, but cannot prove, that we (society) could largely achieve the same ends without violating the First Amendment:

1) Switch from winner-takes-all to approval voting.

Largely eliminates negative campaigning. Counteracts drive to partisanship.

2) Restore Fairness Doctrine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine

3) Publicly financed campaigns

Greatly reduce effectiveness of pay to play strategy.

Re: We posed as 100 Senators to run ads on Facebook. Facebook approved all of them

#239

Post by dibstern »

happertiger wrote: post #207
jjeaff wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that the Zuckerberg ad was rejected seems to indicate that they really were being put through a vetting process. It's possible they are vetted again after payment is received but that seems unlikely.

No it only proves they reject ads from the founder of the company. That’s the only proof you can establish based on the facts. There is no evidence they are vetting anything, and in fact it’s more likely they just filter out zuck.* than the implication that a larger system is at work (Occams razor).

Hahaha my god dude. First, he said it seems to indicate, not prove beyond a reasonable doubt. Second, you think it’s more likely that they filter every single request specifically for Zuckerberg, but do all of the other filtering later on in the pipeline? It’s much more likely that all the filtering happens at the one time, especially at a place like Facebook where most engineers seem to focus on optimising something for performance gains.

Occam’s Razor - it’s knocking on your door, asking to not be quoted when you’re not actually using it.

Re: We posed as 100 Senators to run ads on Facebook. Facebook approved all of them

#240

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

40acres wrote: post #13

Facebook would not be where it is today if their programmatic advertising tools were not friction-less, it's going to be interesting to watch them balance ease of use for customers while securing their system vs. bad actors.

As someone who has had perfectly legitimate Facebook ads rejected I wouldn't say the process was "frictionless". It's just inconsistent and bad actors seem to be much better at gaming the system.
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