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Twitter to ban political advertising

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Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#301

Post by blackflame »

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?

Controversial Suggestion: People discern truth for themselves like they always have and will always continue to do. True and Trustworthy are two very different things when it comes to human instinct. Something that is true but not trustworthy due to lack of feedback may be wrong in the future. Furthermore something that proves to be trustworthy on some subjects might not be the same on others

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#302

Post by aeturnum »

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.

I guarantee you that if you tell a judge you can't take something down "because you use blockchain" the judge will not care and just sanction your company.

To the degree that you provide a service the courts can order you not to provide it. If you've built something which makes it necessary to remove all content to remove any content, that's on you.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#304

Post by adamch »

For everyone asking why Twitter or Facebook should treat ads differently to TV. There are some huge differences between the economics of the platforms that I haven't seen anyone mention.

Each TV station has a limited number of ad-seconds they can allocate per day. Because ad-seconds are scarce, prices are expensive, so you get a small number of expensive ads.

OTOH, Facebook can support a practically unlimited number of ads, shown to different users, changing as people scroll.

It is _much_ easier to fact-check or apply human judgement to a small number of TV ads than to millions of social media ads.

Disclaimer: I don't work in the ad industry, I know nothing about this. I just haven't seen anyone talk about the difference in scale here.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#305

Post by Nerada »

Smart move from Twitter. By removing the speech of people they disagree with under the guise of vague and selective ToS enforcement, they're still able to push their own political agenda, while removing the recourse that political advertising would allow.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#306

Post by musgrove »

It's hard to imagine what this gesture is meant to solve. Political ads are far more innocuous that the everyday posts of its users, which divide, cement and sway people's opinions and thoughts much more forcefully. I'm not saying ban those, but just saying you're not going to run ads, when that's the least of any problem's solution, is kind of superficial.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#307

Post by baddox »

Aperocky wrote: post #269

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.

I think the distinction is very clear between paying for telephone service to call your friends and family and running an ad campaign.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#308

Post by basilgohar »

Aperocky wrote: post #269

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.

Citizens United is the example that shows it's more complicated than that. Once limits are removed, then the same power structures that make and keep powerful entities powerful can continue to be reenforced if checks are not put into place to limit the power money can have in being a vector or amplifier for free speech.

What paying for expression has come to is that you can dominate discourse simply by paying more. So if you have money, you can buy influence even more directly than by paying for bribes and courting legal ramifications.

The reality is marketing works, and that is to say, people's opinions can be changed quite malleably by just inundating them more-and-more with the idea you want them to adopt, whether it's seeing a movie, listening to an album, or adopting an opinion.

Freedom for all cannot exist where power can buy influence in this fashion, and that's where freedom to pay for expression is more complicated than, say, printing my own newspaper and sharing it with others. It lets you also gain the system and buy-up all options of expression (e.g., all ads in a newspaper or website) and in the more insiduous ways, buy "grassroots" influencers through sockpuppet accounts.

I don't have a solution, but it doesn't mean there's not a fundamental problem when we make freedom to pay for expression free of roadblocks to dominating behaviors.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#309

Post by asxd »

asdf333 wrote: post #290
Aperocky wrote: post #269

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.

I don’t think the age of their account should be a factor in the validity of their arguments.

It would be one thing if our rights were restricted so that we could never pay for reach of expression. That seems like it would be a violation of free speech. But in this case (as noted) it’s a private entity enforcing their own legitimate policy exclusively on their own platform.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#310

Post by blotter_paper »

iikoolpp wrote: post #273
blotter_paper wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Telling the government "I know you've told me to take it down, but we specifically designed it in such a way that we can't take it down" sounds like an incredibly good legal strategy that will definitely not backfire.

So far, the "we can't do that" defense has worked for companies that provide E2E encryption. The government may change the rules, of course; they keep talking about it.
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