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Twitter to ban political advertising

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Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#291
post #264
post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sounds fine to me. You hold a popularity contest for the top job, the most popular person gets elected in a transparent fashion. It's very different than opaquely targeting individuals because you know what is going on and if you disagree you can do your own thing to win support.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#292
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…

>puts democracy above profits

In fairness Twitter has been public since 2013 and in that time only turned a profit in 1 year.

These ads wouldn't make or break them, and its far more valuable to get the PR while FB is in the media for the same issue.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#293
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 thing about the first amendment is that it doesn't have conditions.

The first amendment does have conditions that arise through legal construction, since it alone is not the whole of the Constitution.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#294

Wow. That's gotta be a lot of money they're leaving on the table, no? I totally support it. But I've also got to be brutally honest: I wonder if this is a sincere moral stance on Dorsey's part, or more of a business calculation that, leading up to the lightning-rod 2020 election, accepting political ads ultimately has the potential to do more damage to Twitter's reputation than the money would make up for -- or have…

According to @KurtWagner8, Twitter pegged it at less than $3M in last week's earnings call.

https://twitter.com/kurtwagner8/status/1189638660460695552

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#295
post #203

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…

Sure outright lying in a way that can put someone in danger (e.g. printing false instruction on medical drug) should not be allowed. The question is what should be the mechanism to do that. One way is to use courts, where everyone will get a fair hearing, rules will be the same for everybody, and won't change often. Another is to use Facebook moderators as judges, which does not seem to be a very promising path.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#296

Beyond spineless of Jack and everyone at Twitter. Political ads seem to work just fine on TV, radio, print, and everywhere else on the web. Pathetic that Twitter decided to bow down to the most paranoid in our society. All he is doing is validating these stupid conspiracy theories and cementing how scary it is that he has so much control on freedom of expression in modern society. I will bet anything that Twitter all…

> Political ads seem to work just fine on TV, radio, print, and everywhere else on the web.

It's hard for me to interpret those other media as working "just fine":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Horton#Horton_in_the_19...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_Door_(advertisement)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#297

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…

MLS teams are walking billboards. Ads subsidize the world, especially live sports events. Enjoy your 2000% base ticket price increases.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#298

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.

I generally comprehend "grandstanding" in the common language to not only be seeking attention but to misrepresent false or unimportant information for the sake of gaining that attention. Does my definition mesh with yours or how would you find that quote to be misrepresenting a problem in society?

While her question could seem to be reductive, I think it's accurately reducing the question to a point where the answer is easily approachable to most people and, while often time the actual advertisements less obvious lies in practice, a lot of facebook advertisements are knowingly spreading falsehoods and that is hurting the political dialog.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#299
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…

Great. I think I already have just about all of them blocked anyway, and I only ever seem to see unsolicited ads on Twitter on my phone browser - UBlock Origin seems to be highly competent at wiping out all sponsored Tweets, root and nail, in desktop Chrome.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#300

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.

freedom of expression is different from freedom to pay to amplify the expression.

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