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Tulsi Gabbard Sues Google for Suspending Ad Account

nytimes.com

201–210 of 260 posts

Re: Tulsi Gabbard Sues Google for Suspending Ad Account

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In-kind political favors by companies is expressly illegal under FEC regulations. Google propping up a candidate or suppressing another is effectively campaign contributions (or suppression) worth millions of dollars by Google to certain candidates, in violation of FEC regulations. The monopoly status has weight in such cases, as it can be construed as illegal electioneering, given Google's control over speech discov…

> In-kind political favors by companies is expressly illegal under FEC regulations. Yes, but monopoly status is irrelevant to that. It's as illegal from a non-monopoly as a monopoly and an act which legally isn't an in-kind contribution by a non-monopoly isn't transformed into one when done by a monopoly. And policies which are not targeted for or against a particular candidate that happen to affect a candidate diffe…

> there is no “disparate impact” rule ...

There are rules against circumventing campaign contribution laws. Intentional suppression (as alleged) of Tulsi's speech, or that of any other candidate, is equivalent to donations to her opponents of millions of dollars, given Google's scale, without following FEC rules on the same.

Re: Tulsi Gabbard Sues Google for Suspending Ad Account

#202
post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know all the details of how that system works, I don't work on it, but surely you'd agree that they're both more appropriate suggestions, as both of them have been indicted. I don't get "trump crimes" for "trump cri" either.

I agree they are more appropriate. Surely you'd agree there's a lot of room for bias to manifest in a system like this.

Yes, and I definitely understand the argument that Google shouldn't be doing this, but note that we aren't talking about evidence of bias anymore. When someone sees confusing behavior on a political query, the tendency is to assume that political bias is involved, when it's just a very ordinary failing that search engines have all the time.

I don't know the basis of the decision to enact that policy around autocomplete, but I do know Google has been sued many times due to the queries in autocomplete associated with people's names. https://searchengineland.com/google-faces-autocomplete-lawsu... https://www.pcmag.com/news/326136/google-could-face-lawsuit-... http://www.dmlp.org/blog/2013/filing-lawsuits-united-states-...

Re: Tulsi Gabbard Sues Google for Suspending Ad Account

#203
Google should just disallow political ads entirely. This is a no-win proposition. Being too lax leads to election meddling, trying to flag suspicious activity is censorship. You're just an easy punching bag.

They've already stopped serving political ads in Canada, so there's precedent.

Re: Tulsi Gabbard Sues Google for Suspending Ad Account

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multiple FEC laws where companies are barred from electioneering in kind, which is exactly what is alleged to be happening here. Political activity by companies is regulated. A petroleum company cannot offer in-kind donations of "unlimited" gas to a candidate, without flouting FEC campaign contribution and electioneering laws. Likewise, Google cannot artificially prop-up, or suppress a candidate without breaking FEC…

That has nothing in particular to do with whether Google is a monopoly or not, though. Google doesn't graduate into being regulated by the FEC just because it's big.

Tulsi and the article are specific in their mention of Google's 88% market share, because it is material to her being heard in 2019, when most of our communication is online.

The FEC has no mandate to regulate monopolies, but when a monopoly with the power to manipulate elections violates electioneering laws, it automatically becomes the most egregious offender, and the focus of any logic based decision making at the FEC.

Obviously, these are still allegations, but Tulsi has won many elections over 15 years, and her campaign is likely seasoned in managing Google advertising accounts. Which is why her allegations seem believable, given her overt criticism of Google, and Google employees' support of other candidates

Re: Tulsi Gabbard Sues Google for Suspending Ad Account

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have that backwards. Okeefe has paid 100k in damages to an ACORN employee, for libel.

One case, poorly phrased, is hardly a "long list".

More than zero, which is the number of libel cases that O'keefe as won and gotten a payout from. (this is opposed to a number which he hasn't lost, because plaintiffs didn't win, but he was the defendant. But these didn't give him any payout)

Re: Tulsi Gabbard Sues Google for Suspending Ad Account

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Facebook supported Obama. It’s not like Silicon Valley attempts to be impartial on any level. https://ijr.com/ex-obama-campaign-director-fb/ > A former Obama campaign official is claiming that Facebook knowingly allowed them to mine massive amounts of Facebook data — more than they would’ve allowed someone else to do https://www.rt.com/usa/421808-obama-facebook-mine-data/ Carol Davidsen, former director for media…

That is entirely possible but I don’t trust Russia Today as a source, and, I have never heard of IJR before. Would like to see other sources saying the same.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2018/03/19/why-are...

> As the Times put it, the massive exporting of private user data triggered repeated alarms at Facebook due to the volume of profile data going out the door, but that “in each case, the company was satisfied the campaign was not violating its privacy and data standards.” In all, through its data efforts, the campaign ended up with a database of 15 million persuadable voters.

> In short, according to the Times’ reporting, which is borne out by many other reports of the time, the Obama campaign engaged in nearly identical activity to what Cambridge Analytica is claimed to have done: they took a set of users who willingly contributed their data to a cause and quietly mined their friend lists, downloading immense volumes of private material from unwitting individuals that never authorized, let alone had any idea, that a political campaign was harvesting their information from Facebook simply because a person they were connected with had given the organization permission to harvest their information.

https://nypost.com/2018/03/20/obamas-former-media-director-s...

> Obama’s former media director: Facebook was once ‘on our side’

> A former media director for the Obama campaign said Facebook allowed them to access the personal data of its users in 2011 because the social media giant was “on our side.”

> “They came to office in the days following election recruiting & were very candid that they allowed us to do things they wouldn’t have allowed someone else to do because they were on our side,” Carol Davidsen, director of data integration and media analytics for Obama for America, wrote Sunday on Twitter.

> Davidsen said she and her team were able to gather massive amounts of personal information from Facebook users, as well as their friends.

Here’s Carol Davidsen’s Twitter account where this entire story comes from

https://mobile.twitter.com/cld276/status/975568208886484997

Facebook was surprised we were able to suck out the whole social graph, but they didn’t stop us once they realized that was what we were doing.

https://twitter.com/cld276/status/975568130117459975?s=20

They came to office in the days following election recruiting & were very candid that they allowed us to do things they wouldn’t have allowed someone else to do because they were on our side.

https://twitter.com/cld276/status/975568208886484997?s=20

Re: Tulsi Gabbard Sues Google for Suspending Ad Account

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In-kind political favors by companies is expressly illegal under FEC regulations. Yes, but monopoly status is irrelevant to that. It's as illegal from a non-monopoly as a monopoly and an act which legally isn't an in-kind contribution by a non-monopoly isn't transformed into one when done by a monopoly. And policies which are not targeted for or against a particular candidate that happen to affect a candidate diffe…

> there is no “disparate impact” rule ... There are rules against circumventing campaign contribution laws. Intentional suppression (as alleged) of Tulsi's speech, or that of any other candidate, is equivalent to donations to her opponents of millions of dollars, given Google's scale, without following FEC rules on the same.

> There are rules against circumventing campaign contribution laws.

Yes.

> Intentional suppression (as alleged)

Sure, the allegation is of something illegal

There is pretty much zero evidence presented that favors the conclusion alleged over a policy that is not illegally specifically targeted but happens to adversely impact the candidate.

But the allegation is itself a way of getting a not insignificant quantity of free media, which is a sufficient reason for a candidate that is polling at <1% in most Democratic primary polls at not above 2% in the most favorable, and who has raised close to an order of magnitude less money than the top tier Democratic candidates, to make it. The fact is, Gabbard’s never been anything but a third-tier candidate and no one would have any reason to lift a finger to suppress her campaign because it was never going anywhere.

Re: Tulsi Gabbard Sues Google for Suspending Ad Account

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure her campaign wasn't charged for ads that weren't shown. If you buy a Superbowl ad and it wasn't shown and you weren't charged for it, it isn't a breach of contract.

In that hypothetical, it would definitely be a breach of contract. If you paid for an ad during the Super Bowl expecting it to be run, and then it wasn't, that's a breach. Refunding your money may or may not make you whole. What if that was the only way to reach your target customers, and now you can't do it for another year? There are contracts you can breach and just provide a refund, and no one is worse off. But t…

It's quite possible to structure a contract such that payment entitles you to either some other benefit or a refund; whether there is a breach at all depends on the terms of the contract.

And it is the norm that return of consideration is the limit to damages for breach of contract; the exceptional circumstances permitting additional recovery almost all involve you having—both in fact and in the other parties knowledge (and, IIRC, generally requires this to be expressly part of the body of agreement in the contract)—relied on the promise in the contract to forego some other opportunity that is lost in the breach.

Re: Tulsi Gabbard Sues Google for Suspending Ad Account

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that hypothetical, it would definitely be a breach of contract. If you paid for an ad during the Super Bowl expecting it to be run, and then it wasn't, that's a breach. Refunding your money may or may not make you whole. What if that was the only way to reach your target customers, and now you can't do it for another year? There are contracts you can breach and just provide a refund, and no one is worse off. But t…

It's quite possible to structure a contract such that payment entitles you to either some other benefit or a refund; whether there is a breach at all depends on the terms of the contract. And it is the norm that return of consideration is the limit to damages for breach of contract; the exceptional circumstances permitting additional recovery almost all involve you having—both in fact and in the other parties knowled…

> it is the norm that return of consideration is the limit to damages for breach of contract

What contract law are you reading? The standard damages for breach of contract are called compensatory damages... meaning they put you in the same place you were in had the contract not been breached.

Suppose you sign a contract to buy $1000 of widgets, but the seller never sends the widgets, and instead you have to go out and buy the widgets from someone else for $2000. You have a pretty clear breach of contract claim for the extra $1000 you needed to pay someone else.

Re: Tulsi Gabbard Sues Google for Suspending Ad Account

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true that a Nazi victory was practically impossible. But I have no idea how you can say that the US prolonged the war. Supplying the enemies of the Reich and fighting against them is not the sort of thing that causes wars to extend longer, and certainly it drew resources away from Barbarossa. >by forcing Germany into an untenable position No more untenable than what Germany had forced upon France following the F…

...practically impossible. Germany had taken the entire continent. The British only held on as long as they did because we were happy to lose so many cargo ships to U-boats. Without our massive support they would have followed the French example, and that would have been the right decision. The war would have been over much sooner. In that case FDR probably wouldn't have baited Japan into their calamitous mistake eit…

1. The Brits were never going to surrender. The Germans had no capacity to invade the UK's Home Islands. They completely lacked the necessary amphibious shipping to carry an invasion force, nor could they deal with the Royal Navy.

2. The German endgame was always conquest in the East, so even if the Brits DID throw in the towel the conflict wouldn't have ended. On the Eastern Front, the Germans were overstretching their offensive capabilities and logistics barely 6 months into the war (hence why they failed to take Moscow). Pivoting additional forces freed up from containing the British Empire wouldn't have helped Germany's logistical problems, so they wouldn't have forced a surrender on the Soviets like they wanted in any circumstance.

I highly recommend reading Wages of Destruction. For a more accessible study of WW2, check out "Military History Visualized", an Austrian military historian on Youtube who uses a LOT of primary sources.

[1]https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Eco... [2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnPo7V03nbY&list=PLv0uEimc-u...

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