Twitter to ban political advertising • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#441

Post by gojomo » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 11:06 PM UTC

Jack's "earned not bought" effectively means that Twitter's opaque & self-serving algorithms, rather than explicitly disclosed prices & targeting, will control what political messages get "reach" on Twitter.

Twitter's bullhorn will thus only be available to those people and messages that Twitter likes.

Those messages that Twitter doesn't like will be algorithmically confined to a unlighted cellar, for display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#442

Post by Aperocky » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 11:07 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #431

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.

No, not at all. Freedom of expression is the right to say your piece to willing listeners. It's a guarantee the state won't interfere in most speech, not a guarantee that rich people can buy an audience. Cellphones and internet connections are content-neutral pipes that convey content between a willing listener/reader and a speaker they select. So paying for those is a very different case than buying ads, and especia…

There’s no such thing as “legal necessity” to allow something. Our law is based on what is not allowed, instead of what is allowed. There’s an increasing drive towards banning more things and that’s fine if they are warranted, but I hope that we never get to the point where there are a set of action that we are _allowed_ to do.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#443

Post by novalis78 » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 11:08 PM UTC

duxup wrote: post #7

Is this when we now start to wonder what will count as a political ad? Social movements that have a political connection / associated with a particular party or candidate?

That’s exactly how this is going to be gamed.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#444

Post by andrepd » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 11:08 PM UTC

mattrp wrote: post #437

heretoo wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s certainly not what the first amendment is about. Only one country has the first amendment, and this decision from twitter is globally applicable, so it shouldn't factor into the decision.

Those pesky Americans with their free speech... doesn’t anyone here see what this really is about? The elites have lost control of the narrative so they are doing what all elites do in a time of crisis: ban it all. Shut up you mere mortals and go back to doing what you’re told and thinking what we want you to think.

Interesting... Who do you think buys multimillion dollar media ads, if not the elites? It's very much the opposite of what you're saying.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#445

Post by bhupy » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 11:08 PM UTC

wavefunction wrote: post #144

bhupy wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about ACLU or Planned Parenthood?

Those are a civil rights group and a health care provider. If your politics are opposed to civil rights or health care then you may consider them "political" but they aren't. Not by any reasonable definition.

I'm pro-choice, and support/donate to Planned Parenthood, but you have to be willfully obtuse to not accept that abortion is a political issue — 40% of the country thinks that it should be illegal.

I also donate to ACLU, but you have to be willfully obtuse to not accept that it predominately backs left-leaning policy viewpoints, and vocally so — again, fundamentally political in nature.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#446

Post by mattrp » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 11:12 PM UTC

natechols wrote: post #257

adamsea wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Determining the periphery of political speech,as a result, would be inherently political. And, choosing not to determine the peripherey of political speech, is also political. Inaction is a choice, which by its nature supports the status quo. I am not saying inaction, or the status quo, is necessarily good or bad, although I don't agree with the implication in the parent post that Facebook shouldn't do something. W…

For the record, the "yelling fire in a crowded theater" example came from one of the worst Supreme Court decisions of all time, which sent a man to jail for distributing anti-draft literature during WWI. The parent comment isn't necessarily guilty of this, but I've noticed that the people who approvingly quote Oliver Wendell Holmes as a justification for restrictions on free speech almost invariably have no clue abou…

If I could give all the upvotes I ever had, I would assign them to this post right here. It truly saddens me that this one comment represents the exception to this entire thread rather than the majority. Doesn’t it occur to anyone that Twitter is just like any other big corporation out there and this “principled stand” is nothing more than a corporatist trampling of our basic rights? Twitter ceased to be useful to me years ago but this latest action just affirms to me that they really have no clue what freedom is.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#447

Post by Aperocky » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 11:12 PM UTC

CharlesColeman wrote: post #411

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.

> 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? Absolutes don't really work well in the real world: there are too many trade-offs to be balanced and too many positive goals that are at tension with each other. For instance, and absolut…

Free speech comes with downsides just like every other thing. The alternative is to censor some things and allow other things, which work fine until more and more things gets banned, sometimes out of good intention. I’m totally onboard with banning hate speech and so on, but we need a very hard line of freedom somewhere that no bans get to cross, to me, this crosses it

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#448

Post by throwGuardian » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 11:13 PM UTC

But Twitter and most of social media's employees are overwhelming Democrat. Google's Public fillings show 87% donated to the Democratic party, and no one in top leadership donated to the Republicans.

This is such a bogus move, because Twitter knows Trump has out-raised opponents by leaps and bounds, and the only way to cut his message is to stop all political adverts.

Remember, Twitter actively engages in censorship that overtly leans left, so much so that over the past 10 years, PEW research has found a massive, unmistakable tilt to the left in Twitter membership, which was close to 50-50 not too long ago.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#449

Post by monkeywork » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 11:14 PM UTC

SirensOfTitan wrote: post #102

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…

So is it not better to take the twitter approach here and just say - political advertising = banned?

Take the decision out of what is true / not true out of it and just remove the political advertisements all together.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#450

Post by IIAOPSW » Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 11:15 PM UTC

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…

>It’s certainly not what the first amendment is about.

>Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or of the right of the people to peaceably assemble...

Press is pay to express. Only difference is the scale and price.