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Twitter to ban political advertising

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Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#111

Post by lonelappde »

blotter_paper wrote: post #76

I don't agree with every call Twitter makes, but I find Dorsey to be by far the most interesting public figure in the social media game. His two JRE interviews[0][1] and his Tales from the Crypto interview[2] are all worth checking out, IMO. He seems to think Twitter should use a blockchain in the future, and that small social circles should have a system for internally moderating content without needing it to be oka…

My impression of Dorsey is that he doesn't really know anything but me makes statements (like the OP, and the Bitcoin gunk, and making Twitter more "conversational") that don't make sense or stand up to scrutiny, but use a bunch of words that try to convey a position of leadership on not topics.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#112

Post by jMyles »

jld wrote: post #37
duxup wrote: post #7

Is this when we now start to wonder what will count as a political ad? Social movements that have a political connection / associated with a particular party or candidate?

Major League Soccer is going through this problem now. They prohibit political displays in stadium but are now in the business of deciding whether signs that say things like "anti-racist" or "anti-fascist" or "end gun violence" are political or not, and all of the worms that come out of that can. https://deadspin.com/by-banning-protest-signs-mls-is-trying-...

The Portland Timbers literally use the Cascadia Flag. I mean, it's a joke to imagine that political messages are banned.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#113

Post by nexuist »

aakilfernandes wrote: post #93
blotter_paper wrote: post #76

I don't agree with every call Twitter makes, but I find Dorsey to be by far the most interesting public figure in the social media game. His two JRE interviews[0][1] and his Tales from the Crypto interview[2] are all worth checking out, IMO. He seems to think Twitter should use a blockchain in the future, and that small social circles should have a system for internally moderating content without needing it to be oka…

I'm not sure why a blockchain is needed for this. Can't they just have an API where certain posts are "flagged" and hidden in the official UI? If you want to opt-out, you simply use a UI that doesn't hide flagged.

It is not enough because the true goal of moderation is not to hide content people don't like, but to lock out people the majority of people don't like so they can't communicate or work together to spread their (probably hateful) message.

Putting it on a blockchain is abdicating responsibility for any and all content, saying "hey, we just wrote the code, we don't store or propagate any of this ourselves."

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#114

Post by mbesto »

mdorazio wrote: post #43
Miner49er wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A post from the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21380985 A user who works in digital advertising said they do the following: > You don't take money from clients who are representing/selling anything other than goods or services. You evaluate creative & landing pages for each and every campaign. It's extremely simple. Seems like a mostly good solution. I guess you could still sell political services an…

That's a good system, but I'm not sure it's actually workable at the scale of Twitter or Facebook's ad platforms. That's a a lot of human review.

It's almost as if those companies shouldn't be operating at the margins that they currently do...

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#115

Post by crazygringo »

Wow. That's gotta be a lot of money they're leaving on the table, no?

I totally support it. But I've also got to be brutally honest: I wonder if this is a sincere moral stance on Dorsey's part, or more of a business calculation that, leading up to the lightning-rod 2020 election, accepting political ads ultimately has the potential to do more damage to Twitter's reputation than the money would make up for -- or have them wind up being on the wrong side of, and in the subsequent targets of, whoever does win.

But I wouldn't be surprised if it's happily both.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#117

Post by blotter_paper »

aakilfernandes wrote: post #93
blotter_paper wrote: post #76

I don't agree with every call Twitter makes, but I find Dorsey to be by far the most interesting public figure in the social media game. His two JRE interviews[0][1] and his Tales from the Crypto interview[2] are all worth checking out, IMO. He seems to think Twitter should use a blockchain in the future, and that small social circles should have a system for internally moderating content without needing it to be oka…

I'm not sure why a blockchain is needed for this. Can't they just have an API where certain posts are "flagged" and hidden in the official UI? If you want to opt-out, you simply use a UI that doesn't hide flagged.

Yeah, but then they could be ordered to take it down. I think the idea is to be censorship resistant in such a way that the company itself cannot make exceptions when pressured by a court, but I'm forgetting if that's me reading between the lines or if Dorsey explicitly talks about censorship resistance.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#118

Post by jMyles »

Analemma_ wrote: post #23
duxup wrote: post #7

Is this when we now start to wonder what will count as a political ad? Social movements that have a political connection / associated with a particular party or candidate?

The FEC has pretty clear rules about what constitutes a political ad, and presumably Twitter will be using those. But whether that satisfies the (both literal and metaphorical) parties who've been grousing about political ads on Twitter/FB is a different story. Twitter might correctly point out that a given contentious ad doesn't satisfy the FEC's definition and that still won't stop the complaints. Still, I think th…

> The FEC has pretty clear rules about what constitutes a political ad, and presumably Twitter will be using those.

I know that the FEC maintains guidelines for what Coordinated Communications, but I've never heard of this definition of "political ad" - can you provide a link?

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#119

Post by qnsi »

crazygringo wrote: post #115

Wow. That's gotta be a lot of money they're leaving on the table, no? I totally support it. But I've also got to be brutally honest: I wonder if this is a sincere moral stance on Dorsey's part, or more of a business calculation that, leading up to the lightning-rod 2020 election, accepting political ads ultimately has the potential to do more damage to Twitter's reputation than the money would make up for -- or have…

For FB political ads make about 1% of revenue, if I am calculating correctly (source https://articles2.marketrealist.com/2019/05/why-facebook-con...)

I know you asked for Twitter but I guess it's similar. Zuckerberg also considered dropping political ads altogether, as they are controversial

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#120

Post by Traster »

mdorazio wrote: post #43
Miner49er wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A post from the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21380985 A user who works in digital advertising said they do the following: > You don't take money from clients who are representing/selling anything other than goods or services. You evaluate creative & landing pages for each and every campaign. It's extremely simple. Seems like a mostly good solution. I guess you could still sell political services an…

That's a good system, but I'm not sure it's actually workable at the scale of Twitter or Facebook's ad platforms. That's a a lot of human review.

Well, twitter makes let's say $1Bn per year, so they could spend 15000 man years per year and still be breaking even.
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