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Twitter to ban political advertising

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Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#521

Post by ljm »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #131
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 completely agree with what you're saying about the difficulty of cleanly separating political vs nonpolitical speech, but for specifically the case of U.S. political issues, one could imagine a hack of defining political ads as "anything that would need to be reported to the FEC as an expenditure."

The difficulty is that we once used propaganda in war time, because we needed it. The problem now is that you don’t know who is doing it, and for what.

And propaganda back then wasn’t so clear cut. We were allied with Russia and at the end their population was truly decimated.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#522

Post by yellow_postit »

spunker540 wrote: post #516
rapind wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

It comes down to incrementality. Sure Trump has way more money than most challengers, but most people have also already made up their minds about him. His cost to acquire incremental voters is probably much higher than a lesser-known challenger.

Even if he’s not getting incremental votes he can dominate the share of voice by pricing out the competitors.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#523

Post by JaRail »

lpolovets wrote: post #510
jdpigeon wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I'm not a fan of celebrity politicians, the situation you describe sounds pretty democratic.

The other side of the original argument is this: someone like The Rock has a huge advantage, but on the other hand anyone without a following will be at a huge disadvantage. What happens if a celebrity politician tweets a falsehood like "my opponent supports VileIdeaXYZ" and the opponent has 300 Twitter followers and can't pay to promote a tweet? I don't think a system that favors people based on how much money they…

Running an outright dirty campaign would break ToS. So even if they were protected from deletion by virtue of being a politician, their tweets would no longer be included in feeds. It'd be political suicide.

Proper enforcement is hard. They won't get there soon. It'll come slowly for a few years to avoid mistakes. When AIs get reliable at detecting lies/harassment, enforcement will become the norm. (my prediction)

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#524

Post by pmart123 »

baddox wrote: post #348
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…

Okay, you can point out one extreme side of the continuum. What about the other extreme, where every political ad contains blatant lies because anyone who doesn't do that cannot possibly get elected? > I worry though: often the truthfulness of real world statements are difficult to determine. Even when truth is easy to determine, there are few arbiters of information that everyone alongside the aisle trust. This is t…

The cream should eventually rise to the top. Political ads are now archived for anyone to scrutinize. If a politician kept releasing ridiculous ads, voters and the general public would likely know about the existence at least. Censoring ads opens up a much larger can of worms IMO. "Republicans back the green deal" could mean:

a. Congressional Republican majority b. Some elected Republicans c. A group of Republican voters

If AOC ran that ad, it very well would be truthful for B and C, but should Facebook interpret the ad as describing A? There's way too much nuance to be the single arbitrator.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#525

Post by BurningFrog »

rapind wrote: post #467
BurningFrog wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

The research shows - contrary to common wisdom - that money only helps a campaign until it's reached all reachable voters with their message. After that, more spending does not matter.

It's true that (A) the candidate with the most money (B) usually wins, but that doesn't mean A causes B. It's more likely that the most popular candidate attracts both the most money and the most votes, simply by being more popular.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#526

Post by JaRail »

busterarm wrote: post #135
syrrim wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

busterarm is almost certainly referring to chinese "bots".

That's also an interesting phenomenon. There are a large number of Chinese citizens on the internet who will shout down with comments any message counter to the party line there. They are real people, aren't they?

Real people with real friends and families in mainland China, yes.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#527

Post by mattrp »

andrepd wrote: post #444
mattrp wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well this sort of underscores the problem with this approach — who exactly is an elite? What exactly is political? We can’t even agree yet we think Twitter is going to be better at it than us? If it were up to me, I would design the platform as one in which all messages including those with mail-intent were allowed. Then I’d enable the client software to decide based on user preferences. Having a centralized scrutinizer is just a recipe for bad Ju-ju.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#528

Post by lioeters »

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.

(I didn't downvote you but) I think the "elites" are the ones who most abuse the right to free speech, by controlling mass media and the public narrative, as well as conflating political contributions as "speech". Money talks.

When Jack says:

> 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.

Paying for reach and political influence has already pushed democracy to the breaking point. The symptoms are everywhere, from the appalling state of public healthcare, to regulatory capture in virtually every industry, especially financial. The "elites" are not a single group, but a fractured one with varying interests vying for power - but they do have one thing in common, which is using money as speech to control the narrative.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#529

Post by humanrebar »

airstrike wrote: post #493
humanrebar wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concern is about categories, not magnitudes, though. A better analogy would be a certain tax rate for "cars" and another lower one for "trucks" so as to not harm blue collar small businesses. We would start seeing more personal vehicles designed to be "trucks" even if they weren't used for large hauls or some sort of business purpose. And, of course, we already see exactly that happen to car designs. The argument…

> A better analogy would be a certain tax rate for "cars" and another lower one for "trucks" That would be a pretty poor analogy since taxes are mandatory and imposed by the government. Nobody should feel obligated to use Twitter. You can't just decide to create an alternative tax system, but you're definitely free to build your own microblogging / social network.

You can decide to ride a bus or train. Or ride a bike. Or a motorcycle.

And I wasn't going for a perfect analogy, just a better one.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#530

Post by anon73044 »

siosonel wrote: post #463
jlmorton wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>comfortable with non-binary truth

Careful, getting a bit too postmodernists in here. If you look at it too hard all "truths" become false eventually, and that can pave the way to apathy.

>And it's okay to be make a mistaken evaluation, just reevaluate and adjust the simplified "truth" assessment model based on more recent data.

And how many politicians on both sides of the aisle double-down on an issue just to remain consistent to their base? Or worse, change their position thanks to millions of dollars worth of lobbying or the promise of a high-up position once they're out of office?

>And a so-called "neutral" person is, by not taking action, implicitly supporting the dominant narrative, which may be a lie after all.

Maybe the Stoics were on to something. If the masses believe the lie, doesn't it become the truth?

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