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Twitter to ban political advertising

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Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#331
post #322

What 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.

>>What defines a political as?

It's like porn: hard to define precisely, but you know it when you see it.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#332

Whenever these topics come up, the comment section is full of people advocating for no limits based solely on slipper slope arguments: who is going to determine what is politcal? Who is going to determine what is true? But we all life with boundaries and we cope just fine. Why should this street in front of my house have a 35 MPH speed limit? What is special about 35? Why not 36? Why not 34? Who is to say that one is…

yep, the whole "who decides on the truth?" thing is extremely irritating. Do we throw out every court case now because apparently it's impossible to determine what is fact and what is fiction, or to establish common rules or guidelines for conduct? We've been doing nothing else for thousands of years.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#333

Earlier 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.

That would be a big problem for religion and indeed science. Religion is largely based on faith so cannot be 'true' or 'false'. Science is based on theory. Scientists may disagree as to what is true.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#334
post #307

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.

Telemarketers who fake their phone number are just practicing free speech. /s

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#335

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…

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.

Facebook has a public database where all political ads are visible to anyone. Media is free to report on them.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about my side project Read Across The Aisle? We make a free news reader app that helps people keep track of their media bias. That is inherently political (the whole point is to help people become more well-rounded), but running an ad for my free app shouldn't be seen as a political ad since we are devoutly non-partisan.

they aren't saying they're banning partisan advertising, they're banning political advertising. a non-partisan political ad is still a political ad. that said, just because a product is free doesn't mean ads aren't "selling" it, which exposes the flaw in my criteria: if you're selling a political product, an ad can both be trying to sell a product and be a political ad at the same time.

Oh I realize that they wouldn't ban my ad. I'm saying that the heuristic you suggested isn't quite nuanced enough. It seems like this move will create lots of controversy and actually make political advertising on twitter more fraught (because it will still happen, but just not above-board). This may end up being a net negative for society if it pushes things into the seedier underbelly (gaming twitter's algorithms so your tweet pops up in the ICYMI section, buying followers in order to appear more influential, etc.).

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#337
post #322

What 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.

It's not that hard. The UK (and I believe most of Europe) has heavily regulated political advertising. Politicians can't advertise on billboards here, and TV slots are strictly regulated (and time-limited). I'm not entirely sure what criteria are used, but it seems to work reasonably well.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#338
This will definitely help the party and candidates that are barely raising any money compete with the one that is breaking all records. It would be like a fire hose competing with a squirt gun. We just can't allow that.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

No, but see Budweiser did buy that ad space. You bought a ticket to see a game.

Political campaigns also buy ad space with money. It's not as if there's some discount political rate.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The First Amendment is about government suppression of speech. Furthermore, deliberate lies are (legally) not legitimate speech.

It would be more accurate to say that deliberate lies are sometimes not free speech as decided by the courts. These circumstances include false advertising, libel, and slander.

Even in these cases, 1A does not allow the government to prevent such speech (that is, prior restraint). These are not criminal issues. If you engage in any of these practices you may be liable for civil judgments, but that's the extent of it.

It's true that there are limitations on 1A. But these are very frequently misunderstood. For example, the bit about "shouting fire in a crowded theater" is incorrect.

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