Twitter to ban political advertising • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#161

Post by redisman » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 8:50 PM UTC

slg wrote: post #30

One of the key aspects of political content on social media is that you don't necessarily need to buy ads to get your message in front of people. You can instead pay for an army of bots to spread your message and make it appear as genuine user generated content rather than a prepackaged advertisement. So while this decision by Twitter is in my opinion good, what are they doing to cut down on inauthentic political eng…

At least it will take away the incentive from the all-powerful tech companies to stop pushing and optimizing political messages with their core-business interest. If they can't make money off of it, I'm sure these botnets will get more attention from their anti-abuse teams.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#162

Post by dmix » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 8:51 PM UTC

One thing about the first amendment is that it doesn't have conditions. This type of thing that Twitter is doing will be full of them, ie selectively defining what's political or not.

The question is whether this is a lesser evil than allowing political ads but selectively blocking stuff with very broad and potentially inconsistent moderation rules. I personally think totally blocking is the easier of the two in terms of decision making but I expect this will generate far more false positives in the end on the fringes and grey areas.

It's a good thing we'll now have two different experiments, on a large scale, to see which one is more self-destructive.

One of the main problems that I see is the outsized influence we've given to the very-vocal but small parties on social media to have on silencing other people and groups, going well beyond the limited free speech exceptions we previously observed in society for over a century (culturally, not just legally). Neither of these approaches really addresses that problem at FB/Twitter. Which is why I'm curious which one is going to expand those grey areas, where the abuse/downside risk remains, rather than reducing it.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#163

Post by buboard » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 8:52 PM UTC

nlh wrote: post #74

Bravo. That whole thread is smart, well-reasoned, and puts democracy above profits. Good for them. I particularly like his last point: > A final note. This isn’t about free expression. This is about paying for reach. And paying to increase the reach of political speech has significant ramifications that today’s democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle. It’s worth stepping back in order to address. Whic…

> Which I cannot read in any way but “f-you, Facebook.”

He was even more explicit:

> For instance, it‘s not credible for us to say: “We’re working hard to stop people from gaming our systems to spread misleading info, buuut if someone pays us to target and force people to see their political ad…well...they can say whatever they want! ”

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#164

Post by wnevets » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 8:52 PM UTC

kevincrane wrote: post #49

wnevets wrote: post #14

Is #FreeHongKong considered a political ad?

No that's a hashtag

clearly. But if that is the paid ad, is that a political ad?

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#165

Post by TheSpiceIsLife » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 8:52 PM UTC

Reedx wrote: post #121

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…

From what I recall in the JRE and Sam Harris interviews, Jack seemed very reasonable. I think Twitter is something that's gotten away from him (certainly from what he'd like) and is being run by the inmates to a significant degree.

Inmates - does this means the legal team?

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#166

Post by gnicholas » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 8:55 PM UTC

Apparently there will be exceptions for encouraging voter registration. But will people be able to target these ads in ways that blatantly (or subtly) target members of a particular party?

Can I promote a tweet encouraging people in a particular state to register to vote? Probably. What if I target people who like the NRA or Planned Parenthood? Same question for voter turnout tweets ("don't forget to vote tomorrow!"). The devil is in the details.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#167

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 8:55 PM UTC

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #41

brm wrote: post #22

They’ve been working on this for years. It’s a hard problem. How would you solve it?

[deleted]

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#168

Post by trileansoftware » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 8:55 PM UTC

Good luck with that. Anything that can put in a good light some public policy or is remotely related to some politician can be seen as political ad.

Politicians already make use of that kind of veiled advertising with hot button issues. And there's a reason sometimes campaigns are mostly the same at the core except for PROBLEM X WHICH MUST BE SOLVED NOW OR WE ALL DIE.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#169

Post by bhupy » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 8:55 PM UTC

tyre wrote: post #153

bhupy wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about ACLU or Planned Parenthood?

same apply. ACLU can ask for donations or talk about their services, like representing people who can't afford representation. PP can as well. They can't say "vote pro-choice" but can advertise that they provide women's health services including abortions. Basically: you can talk about what you do that isn't related to elections or votes in congress.

Can the NRA ask for donations?

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#170

Post by ilikehurdles » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 8:56 PM UTC

nexuist wrote: post #97

ilikehurdles wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So given that there are bots they can't detect, should they just ban all political speech to prevent any bots from abusing their platform?

I think the majority of people on Twitter would be happy if any political conversation simply disappeared. The vocal minority would never let this happen as they would take it as being silenced for their views.

Free speech is not a minority only issue, and just about all expression is political to someone. As a heads up, there is no need to educate me on free speech expectations as they pertain to private entities versus the state, it is still reprehensible to me that people accustomed to living in a free society advocate for this kind wide-scale silencing of views they disagree with.