Twitter to ban political advertising • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#231

Post by burkaman » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 9:25 PM UTC

dmix wrote: post #162

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 term…

It doesn't have conditions because it's a vague guideline. The actual implementation of the first amendment has many, many conditions. It is not possible to codify subjective concepts like "freedom" and "speech" without conditions.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#232

Post by EpicEng » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 9:25 PM UTC

dmix wrote: post #162

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 term…

One other thing about the first amendment is that it doesn't apply to Twitter.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#233

Post by criddell » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 9:26 PM UTC

Frondo wrote: post #203

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…

One of the better questions she asked was, "should a political party be allowed to run targeted ads at members of the opposing party, giving false information about the election date?" Zuck's response was, "well, I think it's BAD if you LIE. Telling lies is bad." but wouldn't say that Facebook would moderate that kind of content. I personally don't see a legitimate free speech claim saying that political parties shou…

> "should a political party be allowed to run targeted ads at members of the opposing party, giving false information about the election date?"

Would that actually be legal? Are you allowed to try to suppress the vote like that?

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#234

Post by xkjkls » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 9:26 PM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #189

jld wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

I wouldn't have a problem with expanding that to include social issues. You bought a ticket to see a game, not a billboard. This is a problem I have with modern social movements, when they fail to get audiences in public spaces they seek out captive audiences or to be disruptive as possible to completely unrelated places. Hold your rally in a park or march down main street or a pedestrian way or in front of some plac…

If you were a social movement that wanted to get your message across, you wouldn’t seek out a captive audience? The distuption is part of how to communicate

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#235

Post by mieseratte » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 9:26 PM UTC

dopamean wrote: post #208

jld wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

I think fascism is inherently political while racism is not necessarily.

I’ve been told everything is political, when questioning someone once. So I suppose Twitter will bow block all ads?

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#236

Post by colechristensen » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 9:26 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #222

colechristensen wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't have a problem with expanding that to include social issues. You bought a ticket to see a game, not a billboard. This is a problem I have with modern social movements, when they fail to get audiences in public spaces they seek out captive audiences or to be disruptive as possible to completely unrelated places. Hold your rally in a park or march down main street or a pedestrian way or in front of some plac…

> You bought a ticket to see a game, not a billboard. Absolutely. So let's get rid of advertising at games. Not just political advertising; all advertising. No Democratic or Republican ads, but also no Toyota or Chrysler ads, no Coors or Bud Light ads. Unfortunately, there's too much money at stake for that to ever happen. But political ads are different. I don't think Coors drinkers get offended when they see a Bud…

No, but see Budweiser did buy that ad space. You bought a ticket to see a game.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#237

Post by mffnbs » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 9:26 PM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #189

jld wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

I wouldn't have a problem with expanding that to include social issues. You bought a ticket to see a game, not a billboard. This is a problem I have with modern social movements, when they fail to get audiences in public spaces they seek out captive audiences or to be disruptive as possible to completely unrelated places. Hold your rally in a park or march down main street or a pedestrian way or in front of some plac…

Because civil rights has always been most effective when the protests were out of the way in designated areas.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#238

Post by JulianMorrison » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 9:26 PM UTC

vonmoltke wrote: post #214

octonion wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The First Amendment is about government suppression of speech. Furthermore, deliberate lies are (legally) not legitimate speech.

> Furthermore, deliberate lies are (legally) not legitimate speech. That is not correct: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/does-th... > Under U.S. law, many falsehoods—even some deliberate lies—receive the full protection of the First Amendment. That is true even though “there is no constitutional value in false statements of fact,” as Justice Lewis Powell Jr. wrote for the Supreme Court in 1974. N…

That needs amending, IMO.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#239

Post by xenomachina » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 9:27 PM UTC

tyre wrote: post #51

mdorazio wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Of course it is workable. You approve ads as they come in. If the marginal value of the ads isn't high enough to justify human review, you kill those ads. It might be expensive, but it's not impossible. Using "scale" as an out doesn't fly. Sometimes you have to cut back on growth and/or scale to do the right thing. No human review clearly hasn't worked, so either automate or get humans in there. More likely, start wi…

I'm not disagreeing with you, but I think one thing a lot of people don't realize is just how incredibly long the "long tail" is in self-service ads. I would not be surprised if more than 99% of potential ad impressions fall below the cost-effective-to-manually-review threshold. So requiring manual review on all ads is going to mean a lot more sacrifice than cutting back a little. It could mean a lot of these companies would be profitable at all. It's also unfortunate for the vast majority of advertisers in the long tail that are perfectly acceptable.

Automating can help with the more obvious stuff, but there are many ways it can fail in either direction. For example, failing to detect hate-speech dog whistles, or inadvertently suppressing ads from minorities where the language patterns fall outside of what it sees as "the norm".

Anyway, like I said, I'm not disagreeing with you. These systems definitely need considerable improvement, but doing that isn't as trivial as it may at first seem.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#240

Post by xkjkls » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 9:27 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #222

colechristensen wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't have a problem with expanding that to include social issues. You bought a ticket to see a game, not a billboard. This is a problem I have with modern social movements, when they fail to get audiences in public spaces they seek out captive audiences or to be disruptive as possible to completely unrelated places. Hold your rally in a park or march down main street or a pedestrian way or in front of some plac…

> You bought a ticket to see a game, not a billboard. Absolutely. So let's get rid of advertising at games. Not just political advertising; all advertising. No Democratic or Republican ads, but also no Toyota or Chrysler ads, no Coors or Bud Light ads. Unfortunately, there's too much money at stake for that to ever happen. But political ads are different. I don't think Coors drinkers get offended when they see a Bud…

People often choose advertised cheaper products over unadvertised more expensive. You’re going against that pattern