I think this is an excellent move for twitter. The problem now will be determining what is a "political ad" which I'd imagine has a lot of edge cases but if they can do it I think this will be a huge win for them.
Twitter to ban political advertising
251–260 of 1001 posts
Re: Twitter to ban political advertising
#252One 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…
I totally agree this policy will have many many false positives (to be explicit what that means to me: ads that are improperly classified as political and therefore not allowed).
And you know what? I’m totally OK with that! The content is still allowed on Twitter (and whether that’s a good/bad thing is a totally separate discussion). The only thing they’re saying is that they won’t let you pay to amplify its reach. Nobody (other than the advertiser) is going to shed a tear for those misclassifications.
It just means that a few more people will have to be naturally clever / viral / whatever to get their message out. And I’m totally OK with that too. There was once a world where Twitter wouldn’t take money from _anyone_ and everyone had to be clever to be seen or heard on the platform. Not such a bad thing.
Re: Twitter to ban political advertising
#253Bravo. 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…
> 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 Let's just keep in mind that Trump spent way less on the election in total than Clinton did.
Why do we keep that in mind?
Re: Twitter to ban political advertising
#254So why not use the same methodology on TV or print as well and ban political ads across? Why is social media singled out here? What about ads on YouTube? This is nothing but a copout solution. Twitter doesn't have the will nor the capital to be part of the debate here (and political ads are likely too small for them to care) - so they are trying to gain strategy credit by just saying this is a bad idea.
NYTimes is happy to take money for political ads while they are shouting that FB and Twitter should do fact checks.
Re: Twitter to ban political advertising
#255> 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! ;)”
I can't agree enough with this. Very well put, and I think we all know who the winky smile refers to.
Re: Twitter to ban political advertising
#256Quote from Jack > We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought. Will they also ban politicians? Accounts buy followers to grow and look legit, including politicians. Just removing ads isn't removing power of money, as people are (and will be) spending a lot of money to get organic reach. Some of their most popular accounts are politicians accounts. That brings tons of traffic to Twitter and makes m…
Accounts can artificially inflate their follower count with money, but they can't use money to make _me_ follow them. I think that's the difference with paid advertising, where you can buy the ability to reach anyone.
Re: Twitter to ban political advertising
#257From 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…
> Determining the periphery of political speech,as a result, would be inherently political. And, choosing not to determine the peripherey of political speech, is also political. Inaction is a choice, which by its nature supports the status quo. I am not saying inaction, or the status quo, is necessarily good or bad, although I don't agree with the implication in the parent post that Facebook shouldn't do something. W…
For the record, the "yelling fire in a crowded theater" example came from one of the worst Supreme Court decisions of all time, which sent a man to jail for distributing anti-draft literature during WWI. The parent comment isn't necessarily guilty of this, but I've noticed that the people who approvingly quote Oliver Wendell Holmes as a justification for restrictions on free speech almost invariably have no clue about the historical context.
Re: Twitter to ban political advertising
#258Bravo. 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…
the use of fake account swarms to spread political ideology seems the more powerful use of twitter than legitimate ads. will we see a correspondingly brave effort to delete fake accounts?
Re: Twitter to ban political advertising
#259So why not use the same methodology on TV or print as well and ban political ads across? Why is social media singled out here? What about ads on YouTube? This is nothing but a copout solution. Twitter doesn't have the will nor the capital to be part of the debate here (and political ads are likely too small for them to care) - so they are trying to gain strategy credit by just saying this is a bad idea. NYTimes is ha…
Perhaps because of hyper targeting? News media and fact check sites cannot even see some ads that are shown since they are not in the target market, so they cannot fact check or report on them.
Re: Twitter to ban political advertising
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Does it? What if the government decides the earth is the center of the universe and imprisons the scientist who has observable proof that it isn’t? What’s if the government decides “encryption with backdoor is unsafe” is a false statement and suppresses all speech that says otherwise?