Twitter to ban political advertising • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#621

Post by whatshisface » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:14 AM UTC

philipov wrote: post #609

blotter_paper wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

If the Christians are bullying the athiests, and the agnostic does nothing, then yes, they are implicitly supporting the actions taking place in their vicinity. If they're just all sitting around doing nothing, the implicit support is of them sitting around doing nothing.

Every moment you're not actively working for the FBI homicide department, you're commiting implicit murders.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#622

Post by vxNsr » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:15 AM UTC

ben509 wrote: post #375

Consultant32452 wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm skeptical of this. Is a private charity promoting an LGBT fundraiser a political ad? What about Fox News pushing an ad about how other news is fake. Or MSNBC pushing an ad about Russia collusion? Was the now infamous Gillette woke ad political? It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out.

Yeah, "political" is a weasel word like "extremist." A view I like isn't political, it's just common sense or settled science, it's the other guy's views that are "political."

Ah, the "I'm always right" argument. Settled science is an oxymoron. For 100s of years people believed things to be totally settled only for the fundamental concept to be proven false. Anyone who starts up with "settled science" is always relying on faulty reasoning.

And common sense. common to whom?

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#623

Post by artsyca » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:22 AM UTC

What's missing from this dialogue is the idea that Twitter is fundamentally a political organization, just as a soapbox is a political tool

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#624

Post by liara_k » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:24 AM UTC

ivnubinas wrote: post #588

Rapzid wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One persons "suppression of speech" is another persons right to not publish and spread that persons bullshit. This is why people always bring up that the "Free speech" is a concept that applies to governments(never-mind the historical origins in ancient Athens which was largely around protecting political discourse and dissent from prosecution..). Like many restrictions placed on the government it falls apart and bec…

So Facebook should be regulated as a publisher?

If this is intended to make a §230 argument, consider that its reason d'etre is based on the complete impracticality of pre-clearing user generated content.

The practical considerations differ by orders of magnitude when we're talking about paid advertisements.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#625

Post by ninth_ant » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:24 AM UTC

smt88 wrote: post #568

ninth_ant wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not weird at all, it’s a power grab. The politicians want to use social media as an excuse to become arbiters of the truth. It’s repulsive and short-sighted, it appears to me they have forgotten or disregarded the old adage to not claim a new power you wouldn’t trust your opponents with.

They were asking Facebook to arbitrate the truth. That’s not a power grab.

“The truth” as applied to the realm of politics is very often something of substantial controversy and disagreement.

Asking a corporation to be in charge of arbitrating those disagreements doesn’t seem like the end game these politicians are actually pursuing here. Instead my interpretation of their motivation is to silence their opposition.

They are trying to setup a system where they are gatekeepers of these political disagreements, ignoring the fact that the same system will almost certainly be weaponized against them.

For what it’s worth I’m on the same “side” as these politicians for many issues, I just feel like they are playing a dangerous game here.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#626

Post by chillwaves » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:27 AM UTC

stickfigure wrote: post #565

comex wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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.

I think the parent's point is that the variable is for some values of "Green New Deal" . It's like how Republicans (tend to) oppose "socialized health care" but support Medicare. A lot of politics is just playing with words, and "Green New Deal" offers plenty of ambiguity.

Given many republicans do not agree that climate change is caused by humans, I don't see the substance of your point.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#627

Post by philipov » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:28 AM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #621

philipov wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the Christians are bullying the athiests, and the agnostic does nothing, then yes, they are implicitly supporting the actions taking place in their vicinity. If they're just all sitting around doing nothing, the implicit support is of them sitting around doing nothing.

Every moment you're not actively working for the FBI homicide department, you're commiting implicit murders.

Yes, people are fine with all sorts of murders and other atrocities taking place, as long as its not happening to them. As long as the right kind of people suffer. Your phrasing is wrong, of course, because you're conflating support for something with committing the act yourself, but you're not too far off the mark.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#628

Post by Thorrez » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:32 AM UTC

yellow_postit wrote: post #522

spunker540 wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would expect that to require an extremely huge amount of money and be impractical.

Candidates + parties + PACs + lobbying + think tanks + advocacy organizations spent $10B in 2018 in the US, whereas the US almond industry made $12B in 2018. So I expect political spending to not be able to change ad prices very much compared to commercial ad spending.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/18/too-much-dark-money-in...

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#629

Post by modriano » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:34 AM UTC

ninth_ant wrote: post #625

smt88 wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were asking Facebook to arbitrate the truth. That’s not a power grab.

“The truth” as applied to the realm of politics is very often something of substantial controversy and disagreement. Asking a corporation to be in charge of arbitrating those disagreements doesn’t seem like the end game these politicians are actually pursuing here. Instead my interpretation of their motivation is to silence their opposition. They are trying to setup a system where they are gatekeepers of these politi…

For nearly a decade, Donald Trump said Obama was not born in America, despite that being objectively false. Is that a position that shouldn't be silenced? What value does that objectively false assertion add to society? In 2016, pro-Trump ads targeted black voters with ads indicating the wrong day to go vote, with the goal of suppressing the black vote. What value did those objectively false assertions add to society. Why shouldn't they be silenced?

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#630

Post by noisem4ker » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:34 AM UTC

thrower123 wrote: post #299

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…

Great. I think I already have just about all of them blocked anyway, and I only ever seem to see unsolicited ads on Twitter on my phone browser - UBlock Origin seems to be highly competent at wiping out all sponsored Tweets, root and nail, in desktop Chrome.

You can block stuff on your phone browser too. uBlock Origin works on Firefox Mobile.