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Twitter to ban political advertising

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Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#631

Post by chillwaves »

throw_m239339 wrote: post #612
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have rules against slander, defamation, libel, blackmail and leaking secrets, technically they are speech. Yet we usually manage to distinguish them. I don't think this is an intractable problem.

> We have rules against slander, defamation, libel, blackmail and leaking secrets, technically they are speech. slander/defamation/libel aren't criminal laws. It's civil law. That's why the Covington Catholic School kid has to sue "trusted" liberal outlets which allegedly defamed him in a civil court for instant.

How did that turn out?

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#632

Post by eitland »

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.

This is an extremely bad example for two reasons:

- one: you are bringing religion into a discussion where it isn't necessary

- two: it hangs in a frame where a causual passer-by might think this is usual. I mean: if I write "if the rabbits chases the cats and the dogs do nothing" an hypothetical reader who knows nothing about cats and rabbits might easily get the idea that this is a common occurrence, while in fact it is fact a very unusual one.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#633

Post by Clubber »

Barrin92 wrote: post #332
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…

yep, the whole "who decides on the truth?" thing is extremely irritating. Do we throw out every court case now because apparently it's impossible to determine what is fact and what is fiction, or to establish common rules or guidelines for conduct? We've been doing nothing else for thousands of years.

It's more of a, "what is fact and what is opinion," rather than, "what is fact and what is fiction."

"9 out of 10 doctors recommend Colgate," is a fact when Colgate picks the sample of doctors. A trained eye will realize that's actually an opinion, while it's designed to represent a fact. This works because people's opinions can be shaped by presenting an opinion as a majority.

This technique is probably one of the most commonly used and it has many variants, such as, "Your child could be in danger of edibles in their Halloween candy." Technically a fact, but actually a disguised opinion.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#634

Post by TomMckenny »

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…

No need to even think of controlling speech. But certainly ban political advertising which amounts to bribery both in theory and practice.

No one could genuinely believe that probating de-facto bribery is indistinguishable from censorship. Indeed it's very telling that banning _all_ political ads is objected to as being allegedly "biased".

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#635

Post by erichocean »

TomMckenny wrote: post #634
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…

No need to even think of controlling speech. But certainly ban political advertising which amounts to bribery both in theory and practice. No one could genuinely believe that probating de-facto bribery is indistinguishable from censorship. Indeed it's very telling that banning _all_ political ads is objected to as being allegedly "biased".

> Indeed it's very telling that banning _all_ political ads is objected to as being allegedly "biased"

Easy solution that should make everyone happy: a complete ban on all forms of advertising, on all platforms, in all mediums, without any carve outs for any group, cause, or creed.

Or we can just continue to let some people mind-hack the public so that other people can get rich.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#636

Post by fzeroracer »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #597
fzeroracer wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All advertising is incredibly political, because companies operate in a politicized world. Under this guidance for example, Shell could advertise all they want on twitter, but running an ad against Shell about how they pollute the environment or contribute to global warming would be banned. So then your options are to ban all advertising, or be selective in what advertising you allow. Which is inherently a political…

I am not buying this, in the narrow definition, politics is relevant to politicians and elections. Shell is just a private company, so is fair game. Secondly, suppose you could not advertise about shell so what? You can advertise for Greenpeace and related causes.

Greenpeace would absolutely be considered political and likely banned, considering the causes they advocate for.

Which, again, means companies like Shell could advertise all they want, but anything that calls them out would be considered political.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#637

Post by philipov »

eitland wrote: post #632
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.

This is an extremely bad example for two reasons: - one: you are bringing religion into a discussion where it isn't necessary - two: it hangs in a frame where a causual passer-by might think this is usual. I mean: if I write "if the rabbits chases the cats and the dogs do nothing" an hypothetical reader who knows nothing about cats and rabbits might easily get the idea that this is a common occurrence, while in fact…

- one: not my example; it was introduced by someone as a rhetorical jab by trying to introduce an emotionally-charged subject. The point doesn't depend on religion in any particular way, and I'm happy to rephrase it.

- two: I think this is fine. In an example where a bunch of people are sitting in a bar and a big group starts bullying a smaller group, someone who does nothing is allowing this to happen, and we can attribute moral responsibility for them allowing this to happen. Just because everyone knows that it's normal for someone to always get bullied by the larger group doesn't make it okay. If someone doesn't know or understand that bullying is wrong, assigning moral responsibility is more complicated, but neither of those things depend on their knowledge of the frequency of bullying. There is a way in which available information is important, but not this one.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#638

Post by jonny_eh »

fzeroracer wrote: post #520
monkeywork wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

All advertising is incredibly political, because companies operate in a politicized world. Under this guidance for example, Shell could advertise all they want on twitter, but running an ad against Shell about how they pollute the environment or contribute to global warming would be banned. So then your options are to ban all advertising, or be selective in what advertising you allow. Which is inherently a political…

Just because sometimes lines can be hard to draw, it doesn't mean they can't or shouldn't be drawn.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#639

Post by wutbrodo »

modriano wrote: post #629
ninth_ant wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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…

I can't understand how anyone thinks this is a reasonable argument after even ten seconds of thought, and yet it shows up reliably in every conversation on this topic.

We're talking about setting rules that span literally _billions_ of conversations. Taking fully for granted the notion that there are facts that are objective, 100% knowable facts: The question isn't about how the system handles obviously false or obviously true statements, it's how it handles everything on the margin. There were tons of things that were considered conspiracy theories that we now consider clear fact: people like you would have been the ones saying "of course we shouldn't allow people to claim the CIA is drugging and torturing and raping children"[1] in America in the 1950s, or "of course we shouldn't allow people to claim the government is euthanizing the disabled"[2] in 1930s Germany or any number of "obviously false" things that were very much true.

I have no reason to believe your particular example falls into that category, but the sweeping claim that arbitrating political facts is trivial is profoundly ignorant of even a tiny bit of history.

[1] Project MKUltra

[2] Aktion 44

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#640

Post by ianamartin »

criddell wrote: post #225
vonmoltke wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> one could imagine a hack of defining political ads as "anything that would need to be reported to the FEC as an expenditure." That misses a whole bunch of political advertising. Most of it, I'd wager.

You have to start somewhere.

No. You actually don't have to start somewhere.

Starting somewhere bad without a plan is actively bad.

Here's the thing, people. FB and Twitter are pretty much garbage. That's fine, and we all mostly agree about that.

Here's the worst part of social media in general: it's uniting the absolute shittiest of the Republicans with the absolute shittiest of the Democrats and encouraging them both to get together and form a government agency that defines "truth" and then forces private entities to enforce that truth.

There is literally nothing Twitter or Facebook or any other social media website could do that would be this actually bad.

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