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Twitter to ban political advertising

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Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#461

Post by dnautics »

monkeywork wrote: post #449
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.

It's still not easy. Suppose I write a bot that flags all of my competitors ads a political?

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#462

Post by henrikschroder »

heretoo wrote: post #430
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. Only one country has the first amendment, and this decision from twitter is globally applicable, so it shouldn't factor into the decision.

> Only one country has the first amendment

Do you think other countries don't have freedom of speech or freedom of the press?

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#463

Post by siosonel »

jlmorton wrote: post #423
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…

> I often see these clean, easily provable anecdotes from those who support some kind of suppression of speech. I had a bit of a different take. I actually think even this simple statement is incredibly difficult to verify. First, we have to define what the Green New Deal even is. I don't mean this to be snarky, but even that is difficult. Then we have to define what support means. Does it mean positive comments in t…

"binary judgement of truth"

I think people should be more comfortable with non-binary truth, based on the likelihood that something is a lie or not based on historical record. I would put more trust in a statement from someone with a record of telling unbiased truth versus someone with a record of frequently spewing lies or having ingrained bias.

Otherwise, if you don't make these types of initial simplifications, it becomes too complicated to start evaluating the truth of any statement, including scientific ones. And it's okay to be make a mistaken evaluation, just reevaluate and adjust the simplified "truth" assessment model based on more recent data.

There is a danger in deferring a "truth" assessment: a community loses a sense of shared truth leading to polarization, doubt, confusion. And a so-called "neutral" person is, by not taking action, implicitly supporting the dominant narrative, which may be a lie after all.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#464

Post by zanny »

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…

Trying to make a slippery slope argument about a private corporations private, for-profit website is hilarious.

Twitter will do whatever the hell it wants on its own property and has no obligation to listen to anyone except the voice of 51% of its shareholders.

If you don't want your communications to be under the total absolute control of a corporate entity you have no influence over, you might want to pack your bags and get off for profit social media.

You don't need to have an "argument" about "policy" on your own Mastodon instance. If upstream does something you don't like, you fork it. If another instance does something you don't like, you block it. Because thats actually your platform then.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#465

Post by birdyrooster »

friendlybus wrote: post #384
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…

There are places where there are no speed limits. The autobahn for one. Arguing against 'the optimal boundary is impossible argument' assumes you agree with his base axioms, that things like money are more important than the exploration of other principles. These are not slippery slope arguments, but the very base of politics itself. Why have any rule.

You are begging the question by assuming that the autobahn is valuable beyond a speed-regulated road. I will agree the autobahn has novelty value for the sake of it's own peculiarity, but that isn't something you can generalize as valuable for other roads. If going as fast as you would like was valuable for any reason beyond novelty and/or tourism, we would be doing it already.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#466

Post by slg »

redisman wrote: post #161
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…

At least it will take away the incentive from the all-powerful tech companies to stop pushing and optimizing political messages with their core-business interest. If they can't make money off of it, I'm sure these botnets will get more attention from their anti-abuse teams.

Active user totals and engagement numbers are still a big driver in valuations so the incentives still align with not cracking down too hard (as long as legitimate users aren't pushed away by the inauthentic content).

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#467

Post by rapind »

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.

Incumbents usually have a lot more money to spend on advertising though too. On average I doubt advertising helps challengers more than incumbents (there are always edge cases of course).

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#468

Post by pubutil »

buboard wrote: post #313
munk-a wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally comprehend "grandstanding" in the common language to not only be seeking attention but to misrepresent false or unimportant information for the sake of gaining that attention. Does my definition mesh with yours or how would you find that quote to be misrepresenting a problem in society? While her question could seem to be reductive, I think it's accurately reducing the question to a point where the answer…

oh her questions were more reasonable than others, like for example the question about the sexual orientations of Libra association member boards. Still, her question about what constitutes a political lie is not representative of 99% of political lies , which are usually more subtle and subject to debate. Also, his response "we should let the people see for themselves the lies and judge politicians accordingly" was…

>“. . . was not really countered at all”

That was probably the only point Zuckerberg made that I agree with, though I don’t doubt that we think that way for different reasons.

If I know social networks are deleting ads or posts that are deemed untruthful then 1) how do I see who determines the truthfulness of the network’s content and 2) how can I trust that nothing else is being removed at will? It’s a classic argument.

Personally, I trust myself to filter through information and make informed decisions; more so than Facebook or Twitter. I think that many people prefer not to make informed political decisions on their own for a variety of reasons. Be it a lack of time, ambition, or research knowledge, it harms us as a whole when we allow ourselves to be told what political opinions to hold.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#469

Post by erichocean »

zanny wrote: post #464
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…

Trying to make a slippery slope argument about a private corporations private, for-profit website is hilarious. Twitter will do whatever the hell it wants on its own property and has no obligation to listen to anyone except the voice of 51% of its shareholders. If you don't want your communications to be under the total absolute control of a corporate entity you have no influence over, you might want to pack your bag…

Evergreen: Twitter is a public company.

And the grandparent just argued that we should easily be able to regulate companies. You're saying the opposite, now we can't regulate because they're quote-unquote "private"?

Well, which is it? Can we regulate for-profit companies for the good of the nation or not? If not, why not?

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#470

Post by hk__2 »

friendlybus wrote: post #384
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…

There are places where there are no speed limits. The autobahn for one. Arguing against 'the optimal boundary is impossible argument' assumes you agree with his base axioms, that things like money are more important than the exploration of other principles. These are not slippery slope arguments, but the very base of politics itself. Why have any rule.

> There are places where there are no speed limits. The autobahn for one.

Notpick: only some portions of it don’t have speed limits. Even on those, it’s recommended to drive under the usual limit.

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