Seems like the right move. Personally, I think we are reaching the edges of what we can reasonably expect from social media companies. If a politician is lying in their ads, is it up to a social media company to decide the truth or well informed citizens to decide fact from fiction? In some cases the easiest way to win is not to play. Hope Zuck gets the message.
Twitter to ban political advertising
321–330 of 1001 posts
Re: Twitter to ban political advertising
#322What defines a political ad? For example are prolife ads political, even if they mention no laws or politics? What about ads that do not mention politics but are targeted to influence policy? Seems like an ambiguous category except for outright promoting particular candidates and laws.
Re: Twitter to ban political advertising
#323Wouldn't Trump's tweets fall in the category of "political advertising"?
Re: Twitter to ban political advertising
#324So 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…
> This is nothing but a copout solution. Who's solution is a copout? You're saying that it is inconsistent for Twitter to not accept payment for political ads, but a print newspaper to do so. This is correct. But that inconsistency reflects the fact that the decisions are being made by different people. What would be a non-copout solution that twitter could implement?
Twitter can just follow Facebook here and let public/journalists evaluate the truthfulness of the campaigns vs. doing it themselves (as that is open to interpretation). If print media and TV channels can do that, why can't social media?
Re: Twitter to ban political advertising
#325I'd love it if Dorsey did this for the right reasons (and applaud the effort regardless), but seems far more likely that this netted out as a bigger publicity win. A policy of "there are no Twitter rules for politicians, just don't make us a direct accessory to it" is disingenuous at best.
I'd argue that in this case, intention is far less important than the outcome.
Re: Twitter to ban political advertising
#326Freedom 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.
IF google and microsoft came to an agreement over what people where allowed to email, it would be pretty interesting to see if most people just accepted censorship on private communication. To an extent they already do so, in that they block spam at their discretion. Do you respect that same right for google and microsoft to ban the propagation of pro-political-opinion-you-dont-agree-with from their platforms?
Re: Twitter to ban political advertising
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
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" ?
The UK is infamous for its ruinous libel lawsuits against people who dare to say true things about the rich and powerful. It was so widely abused that the US ended up having to introduce a law blocking our libel suits fronm being enforced over there.
Re: Twitter to ban political advertising
#328So 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…
I'm totally fine banning all political ads, let's do it!
Re: Twitter to ban political advertising
#329This can be very bad globally. In countries with totalitarian regimes like Russia advertising on Twitter was one of few ways to reach politically active audience in order to make people go and vote. It's literally impossible to buy political advertising anywhere since government will put pressure on anyone who make business with opposition.
Re: Twitter to ban political advertising
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unsure if you’re asking who is running twitter or what’s meant by ‘inmates’ so will attempt to answer both. I suspect it’s marketing people / short-sighted profit minded people rather than the legal team running the place. And if you are asking about inmates meaning, it’s an idiom, “the inmates are running the asylum” meaning the least useful/knowledgeable people have taken over from the competent. https://idioms.the…
Thanks :)
Glad to help. Which one was it you wanted to know?