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Twitter to ban political advertising

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Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#451

Post by mattrp »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #289

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…

Heh... I find it funny that this issue underscores just how difficult it is for humans to uniformly decide on ground truth... but oh sure, let’s turn everything over to AI... that’ll be awesome! (Sorry for the non sequitor)

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#452

Post by BurningFrog »

theuri wrote: post #396
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…

Regardless of where you are on the political spectrum - it's really inspiring to see a company take a stand against political advertising, if it can't be properly vetted. One more step to strengthen our democracy.

The contrarian view is that banning political advertising favors incumbents in elections.

The incumbents are already known. Challengers have to make themselves known, and paid advertising is one of the main ways that is possible.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#454

Post by BurningFrog »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #289

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…

I think you just made a slippery slope argument against slippery slope arguments!!!

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#455

Post by charliepark »

wpietri wrote: post #435
erikpukinskis wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone knows the first amendment applies to governments only. Not true in the slightest.

Would you care to give case law demonstrating otherwise? Because as best I can tell, it only applies to use of government power.

I think they were replying to the "Everyone knows" part of the statement. That is, the first amendment only applies to use of government power, but many people don't actually know that.

See my other message in this thread for some examples (from today!) of people who think the first amendment is relevant when talking about private companies.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#457

Post by ahbyb »

buboard wrote: post #155
blotter_paper wrote: post #76

I don't agree with every call Twitter makes, but I find Dorsey to be by far the most interesting public figure in the social media game. His two JRE interviews[0][1] and his Tales from the Crypto interview[2] are all worth checking out, IMO. He seems to think Twitter should use a blockchain in the future, and that small social circles should have a system for internally moderating content without needing it to be oka…

Dorsey espouses some very libertarian views and yet he's generally leaning left of course. Still , he s the only one who dares give Trump a megaphone. I think he handles the whole situation exceptionally well.

It does not take a whole lot of courage to give a megaphone to someone who's making you millions.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#458

Post by dnautics »

BurningFrog wrote: post #452
theuri wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of where you are on the political spectrum - it's really inspiring to see a company take a stand against political advertising, if it can't be properly vetted. One more step to strengthen our democracy.

The contrarian view is that banning political advertising favors incumbents in elections. The incumbents are already known. Challengers have to make themselves known, and paid advertising is one of the main ways that is possible.

This is very much the part of the political spectrum I'm on.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#459

Post by kick »

busterarm wrote: post #125
tyre wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment is written in a way that implies that this happens. Do you have evidence to back that up? Not evidence that they take down suspected state-sponsored brigading, but that they were wrong?

Wired ran an article demonstrating that this happened. https://www.wired.com/story/how-americans-wound-up-on-twitte... I shouldn't have to google for someone as politically active... ...you're literally working to elect someone president.

That article is surprisingly poor for Wired.

Both Hirschfeld and Osborne first logged in to their accounts in February 2011, well before the first known IRA activity in 2013. WIRED’s analysis found at least 63 accounts created between 2009 and 2013 included in the list provided to Congress.

It's reasonably well known to anyone who's used the site that old accounts are fairly frequently hijacked by others, so this doesn't invalidate Twitter's claim.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#460

Post by radium3d »

Bots don't have a citizenship ("chinese", "russian"), they merely push the agenda of the person/persons who have paid the most, no? Are there not many hijacked computers, routers, devices inside the USA and many other countries which are one of the most important parts of the bot networks to evade detection?

I wonder if now that political advertising is banned on twitter if the illegal / immoral bot and human armies of agenda pushers will have a larger advantage than before now that those who follow the rules have lost their outlet of spreading their message with their donors money beyond their own profiles and their existing followers?

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