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Twitter to ban political advertising

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Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#401

Post by xkjkls »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #343
buboard wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which I cannot read in any way but “f-you, Facebook.” He was even more explicit: > For instance, it‘s not credible for us to say: “We’re working hard to stop people from gaming our systems to spread misleading info, buuut if someone pays us to target and force people to see their political ad…well...they can say whatever they want! ”

I'm skeptical of this. Is a private charity promoting an LGBT fundraiser a political ad? What about Fox News pushing an ad about how other news is fake. Or MSNBC pushing an ad about Russia collusion? Was the now infamous Gillette woke ad political? It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out.

It's far easier and less controversial to decide what is and isn't political than to decide what is or isn't true.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#402

Post by xkjkls »

randomsearch wrote: post #387
Consultant32452 wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm skeptical of this. Is a private charity promoting an LGBT fundraiser a political ad? What about Fox News pushing an ad about how other news is fake. Or MSNBC pushing an ad about Russia collusion? Was the now infamous Gillette woke ad political? It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out.

This problem has been addressed in conventional media for a long time, nothing new here.

Well, American conventional media. It will be interesting to see how this policy extends internationally.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#403

Post by toxik »

cm2187 wrote: post #399

Call me a Scrooge but my read is rather that whoever wins will piss off the opposite side, who will blame social media like they did in 2016, and there is no scenario where twitter doesn't ends up the target of more regulations unless they stay away from the elections as far as they can. This will not help with trolls and viral campaigns though.

I think it’s about ducking out of the crossfire. Why Scrooge? This policy is obviously not decided on a single argument, though it is a heavy one.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#404

Post by learc83 »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #340
SauciestGNU wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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.

That's incorrect. There exist many statutes that criminalize certain commercial speech. And 15 states have criminal libel laws on the books. SCOTUS hasn't ruled that criminal liable laws generally violate the 1st amendment even though they have overturned many examples in the past.

And there is no general prohibition against criminalizing speech that isn't protected by the first amendment such as fraudulent or illegal commercial speech.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#405

Post by kkotak »

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…

Speaking of 'Paying for reach'. The Supreme Court said (in 2014) there should be no limit on how much an individual can contribute to campaigns (money that is used to buy reach) - And Corporations are legal persons - so... https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/03/us/politics/supreme-court...

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#408

Post by abcpassword »

slg wrote: post #30

One of the key aspects of political content on social media is that you don't necessarily need to buy ads to get your message in front of people. You can instead pay for an army of bots to spread your message and make it appear as genuine user generated content rather than a prepackaged advertisement. So while this decision by Twitter is in my opinion good, what are they doing to cut down on inauthentic political eng…

They will not. Paid engagement will increase. It’s a good time to be a shill on Twitter.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#409

Post by paulddraper »

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.

Not to mention the fact that "politics" winds up being a very wide swath. I will be interested to see how Twitter classifies this.

1. Suppose you advertise for an donations to an adoption charity? Finding good homes for children is surely universally recognized as a wonderful, noble cause. Advertise on Twitter.

2. Now suppose the adoption charity partners with and funds pregnancy centers needing adoption services.

3. Now suppose that many of these partner pregnancy center don't offer or recommend abortion services.

4. Now suppose that proposed legislation requires pregnancy centers to provide information about abortion, with resistance from these pregnancy centers.

5. The organizations directly funded by your charity are now embroiled directly in one of the most hot-button political issues of the last 50 years.

Is your charity now political? Can it run ads on Twitter?

---

Note: A common misconception is that there is no such thing as 509(a) political charity. This is incorrect. Non-profits are only restricted from supporting political candidates. They can support political issues all they want and do limited lobbying.

The easy thing is for Twitter is to just use 509(a) status as the yardstick for bordline orgs, but that line would be far into the "politics" space.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#410

Post by xkjkls »

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.

If we create a system where only those who can pay are able to get their message across, is that really free expression for the millions who can't?
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