Twitter to ban political advertising • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#261

Post by gradys » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 9:38 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…

I believe Zuckerberg's answer to that question was that such an ad would be banned. It's an explicit exception in the policy that permits lying in political ads, an exception that bans lies in service of voter suppression.

To the broader question, about whether all lies in political ads should be banned, the free speech argument against is that while it's easy to invent easy and obvious cases of lying, enforcing that policy in reality is very difficult and puts Facebook in the position of censoring speech that one side may consider a truth and the other may consider a lie.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#262

Post by jaf656s » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 9:38 PM UTC

product50 wrote: post #254

So 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…

It's harder/impossible to deliver hyper-personalized political ads in those other mediums.

It's worth taking some time to figure out the ramifications of all this.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#263

Post by bduerst » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 9:39 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…

Sure, ticket prices go up accordingly and demand for their sales drops off consequentially.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#264

Post by tomp » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 9:39 PM UTC

mrtksn wrote: post #253

tomp wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Controversy is addictive. By forbidding spending money to get reach, the ones with most reach will be those who are the most controversial.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#265

Post by belltaco » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 9:39 PM UTC

StreamBright wrote: post #249

JulianMorrison wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That needs amending, IMO.

And who is going to decide what is the truth? Ministry of truth?

See other countries where there are stricter rules, UK for example.

The judicial and court system are already tasked with finding truths, how is that not "the ministry of Truth" ?

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#266

Post by dmix » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 9:39 PM UTC

EpicEng wrote: post #232

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.

People make this point every single time this comes up like they've contributed something interesting or new, it's exhausting.

No one has said the constitution applied to Twitter. Everyone knows the first amendment applies to governments only.

Yet free speech still has a huge cultural role in western countries that goes well beyond government charters, for very good reasons. That's the reason why it's embedded in law in the first place, not the other way around.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#267

Post by account73466 » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 9:39 PM UTC

"Political" is a view that is not in line with common sense ... which is entirely based on our political view.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#268

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 9:39 PM UTC

tomp wrote: post #244

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…

> 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.

[deleted]

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#269

Post by Aperocky » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 9:39 PM UTC

Freedom of expression inherently includes the freedom to pay for expression.

What are your expression worth if you wouldn’t be able to pay a service, cellphone/internet connection/reddit gold to express that? How is paying ads different than paying a campaigner set up a loudspeaker in the middle of a city?

But then again, since twitter is a private enterprise, I fully respect their right to act on their own platform.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#270

Post by LegitShady » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 9:40 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…

Twitter's entire net revenue isa small line item to google and youtube. Saying fuck you and being a small fraction of your opposition is not brave and totally useless.