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Twitter to ban political advertising

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Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#171

Post by briandear »

buboard wrote: post #155
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…

Dorsey espouses some very libertarian views and yet he's generally leaning left of course. Still , he s the only one who dares give Trump a megaphone. I think he handles the whole situation exceptionally well.

However shouldn’t the president have a “megaphone?” In the old days, when a president spoke, the media would “interpret” what he said. Politicians being able to speak directly to the population is a good thing.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#172

Post by a13n »

blotter_paper wrote: post #117
aakilfernandes wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We've learned that you can't get around the law (eg. court orders) "because blockchain". The government has shown us that the law prevails.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#173

Post by wolco »

mc32 wrote: post #21
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?

I mean social movements are all political. So I guess grass roots will be okay, just not paid or paid endorsements. So no promoting of the Sierra Club by commercial entities... for example. This is going to be s can of worms.

Grassroots movements don't spend money on ads. They are the viral.. spread naturally and don't have an ad manager or staff.

Once you start paying for ads you are an organization.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#174

Post by mattlondon »

Perfect timing! Just as the UK election campaign kicks off, they ban advertising for it so we can hopefully finally see a partial reduction to the lazy journalism of "reporting" on how people are reacting to Party X's ads on twitter.

Journalists and politicians seem to put a lot more emphasis on twitter than most people seem to care about.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#175

Post by [deleted] »

standardUser wrote: post #88
partiallypro wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Bots" are such a boogeyman on Twitter, usually from older folks that just don't understand the nature of the internet. I've seen threads where completely legitimate people are accused of being "bots." If the problem were so extreme, it would be much more pronounced. It's incredibly hard to police, and it happens on every single platform.

Some people may be conflating bots with paid trolls, which are a real and pervasive problem across many platforms.

[deleted]

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#176

Post by chillacy »

acollins1331 wrote: post #2

We don't let blatantly false ads run on TV. Why is it so hard for Facebook or Twitter to do the same thing?

We actually do... https://www.thebalancecareers.com/should-tv-stations-ban-fal...

For social media to start fact checking ads is actually a big change, but maybe the right thing to do, even if it's hard.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#177

Post by buboard »

SirensOfTitan wrote: post #102

From what I recall Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez questioned Zuckerberg, she questioned along the anecdote of: If I purchase ads on Facebook saying Republicans support the Green New Deal (but they don't), will Facebook take the ads down? I often see these clean, easily provable anecdotes from those who support some kind of suppression of speech. I worry though: often the truthfulness of real world statements are difficu…

Obviously such questions were manipulative grandstanding. The only way to win the political rhetoric game is not to play. That's what twitter is doing.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#178

Post by throw_m239339 »

buboard wrote: post #155
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…

Dorsey espouses some very libertarian views and yet he's generally leaning left of course. Still , he s the only one who dares give Trump a megaphone. I think he handles the whole situation exceptionally well.

> Dorsey espouses some very libertarian views and yet he's generally leaning left of course

Since the left has a embraced intersectionality, you can't be a "libertarian" and lean "left", that's completely incompatible, or I'm not sure what left you are talking about. That Dorsey puts up a facade because he lives in the silicon valley? sure, just like the higher ups at Alphabet.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#179

Post by briandear »

vonmoltke wrote: post #150
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree with what you're saying about the difficulty of cleanly separating political vs nonpolitical speech, but for specifically the case of U.S. political issues, one could imagine a hack of defining political ads as "anything that would need to be reported to the FEC as an expenditure."

> one could imagine a hack of defining political ads as "anything that would need to be reported to the FEC as an expenditure." That misses a whole bunch of political advertising. Most of it, I'd wager.

A sympathetic news outlet is often treading on the edge of political advertising as well. Some TV station airing a favorable or unfavorable documentary on a candidate during election season when executives of those stations have publicly supported (or not supported) a candidate or party seems no different than a PAC buying an ad on that same station.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#180

Post by vonmoltke »

wavefunction wrote: post #144
bhupy wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about ACLU or Planned Parenthood?

Those are a civil rights group and a health care provider. If your politics are opposed to civil rights or health care then you may consider them "political" but they aren't. Not by any reasonable definition.

Both organizations have PACs. Their PACs should be covered by any ban on political advertising.
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