Twitter to ban political advertising • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#571

Post by nexuist » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:46 AM UTC

ilikehurdles wrote: post #170

nexuist wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the majority of people on Twitter would be happy if any political conversation simply disappeared. The vocal minority would never let this happen as they would take it as being silenced for their views.

Free speech is not a minority only issue, and just about all expression is political to someone. As a heads up, there is no need to educate me on free speech expectations as they pertain to private entities versus the state, it is still reprehensible to me that people accustomed to living in a free society advocate for this kind wide-scale silencing of views they disagree with.

>it is still reprehensible to me that people accustomed to living in a free society advocate for this kind wide-scale silencing of views they disagree with.

I absolutely agree with you.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#572

Post by usaphp » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:52 AM UTC

blotter_paper wrote: post #538

siosonel wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

> And a so-called "neutral" person is, by not taking action, implicitly supporting the dominant narrative Strongly disagree, this would imply that an individual's support of a narrative can change simply by the environment around them changing while the individual stays static. Three Christians, two athiests, and an agnostic are sitting at a bar. Does the agnostic support Christianity? Two of the Christians leave. Do…

People in your example are not “neutral” in the first place.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#573

Post by danboarder » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:53 AM UTC

jimkleiber wrote: post #561

danboarder wrote: post #549

I know this is about people paying for posts with money, but if one zooms out a bit to think about this -- any user of a platform like Twitter is paying/spending time (aka paying in their time and attention). IMO, trying to police and stop people from spreading their ideas online (political or otherwise) is a fools errand, and the antithesis of how social networks function.

I'm starting to see Twitter and Facebook more like the newspapers, and really, more like the delivery service. Perhaps I could print anything in a newspaper, which I can't, but even if I could, someone would have to deliver that newspaper to the doorsteps of people for them to read it or they would have to go try to find a copy in the store. These platforms already have delivery routes determined through algorithms,…

Well that is a similar line of reasoning that has been applied to ISPs that deliver internet itself, and I think music publishers took that line when suing ISPs for facilitating piracy. I think all forums and UGC platforms deal with this in their own way. (like Reddit, they mostly let each subreddit have their own mods that decide what content and topics they want to allow.) In Twitter's case, I am skeptical of the end game with their current approach, where the loudest in the room tends to stand out.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#574

Post by siosonel » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:54 AM UTC

blotter_paper wrote: post #538

siosonel wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

> And a so-called "neutral" person is, by not taking action, implicitly supporting the dominant narrative Strongly disagree, this would imply that an individual's support of a narrative can change simply by the environment around them changing while the individual stays static. Three Christians, two athiests, and an agnostic are sitting at a bar. Does the agnostic support Christianity? Two of the Christians leave. Do…

Did the Christians try to convince the agnostic about something? If not, nothing changes before or after they leave.

Anyway, the OP was about political ads that can affect how people vote, a decision to vote or not affects the community. Being agnostic about something (aliens) does not necessarily have the same gravity of effect as believing in a political ad.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#575

Post by not_a_cop75 » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:56 AM UTC

But who's going to ban marketers harvesting immense numbers of twitter accounts for marketing? Doesn't sound like they are at all opposed to those things that will make them look popular, since on paper it will increase their numbers.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#576

Post by Faark » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:58 AM UTC

tyre wrote: post #57

busterarm wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also get an army of real actual people to spread your message and the company can just ban them and accuse them of being bots or having ties to some government without actual evidence.

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?

There was a talk [0] at Chaos Communication Congress 2 years ago about the early "political bots hype". Sadly in german and I'm not sure how great the provided translation is. It e.g. calls out "more than 50 tweets per day" being used as criteria to identify bots and concludes with more/better research is needed. Would love to hear an updated version or something alike, if someone has recommendations.

[0] https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9268-social_bots_fake_news_und_f...

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#577

Post by damq » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:58 AM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #222

colechristensen wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't have a problem with expanding that to include social issues. You bought a ticket to see a game, not a billboard. This is a problem I have with modern social movements, when they fail to get audiences in public spaces they seek out captive audiences or to be disruptive as possible to completely unrelated places. Hold your rally in a park or march down main street or a pedestrian way or in front of some plac…

> You bought a ticket to see a game, not a billboard. Absolutely. So let's get rid of advertising at games. Not just political advertising; all advertising. No Democratic or Republican ads, but also no Toyota or Chrysler ads, no Coors or Bud Light ads. Unfortunately, there's too much money at stake for that to ever happen. But political ads are different. I don't think Coors drinkers get offended when they see a Bud…

Wrong.

Companies that buy advertising at games pay a pretty penny for it. Fans who buy tickets to games have paid to watch the game, not to advertise their cause. If fans want to advertise at games, they can pay the advertising rate.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#578

Post by EMM_386 » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 2:04 AM UTC

This is fantastic.

I recall seeing a Tweet from US Senator Lindsey Graham today which was essentially a hack-job attempt to raise additional defense money for Trump.

My first thought was "this really needs to be flagged", until I noticed the small little "promoted" tag under it.

Well, no more of that nonsense.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#579

Post by xkcd-sucks » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 2:05 AM UTC

comex wrote: post #544

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…

“X supports the Green New Deal” is indeed highly subjective for some values of X. But that doesn’t include most Republicans, who have been consistently against the whole thing from start to finish.

But if it wasn't called the Green New Deal, would those same Republicans oppose constituent parts?

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#580

Post by jeffdavis » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 2:07 AM UTC

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…

The problem with degrees of truth is that they aren't composable into an argument. I can chain together a handful of things that are 99% true and arrive at an absurd conclusion because the 1% is the interesting bit.

In this context, the question is whether something is political speech or something else. What is included and excluded from that category will get pretty interesting.

We saw the same thing with compelled union dues in the public sector. Were those for political speech or just routine union activity? SCOTUS said it couldn't tell the difference, so a public institution couldn't compel employees to pay dues.

I guess twitter thinks they can tell the difference, but I suspect there will be a lot of controversy.