Twitter to ban political advertising • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#641

Post by lioeters » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 4:07 AM UTC

mattrp wrote: post #587

lioeters wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(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 in…

Thank you for not down voting me — but I’d love you just the same if you did. I find it difficult to rebut the argument you present with the following exception: in the US we have several hundred years of rigorous iteration in our legal system with respect to what is and what isn’t protected speech. For twitter to decide now and it this juncture that the speech it most dislikes is x, something about that doesn’t sit…

That sounds sensible, and I'd agree with you that Twitter's decision does raise questions about who gets to decide what's allowed to have "reach".

I suppose your parent comment sounded a bit too incendiary for civilized discussion. It did seem somewhat reductionist to say the "elites" are banning free speech to control the narrative.

It's possible that Twitter is biased in favor of certain political leanings; it could be that this decision is not as altruistic as it sounds; maybe there are hidden (or even unconscious) political motives. And, as you pointed out, there's no saying what may happen in the future, when someone else is in charge of the company. I think these are valid questions about the power they have to shape the public narrative, at least in their sphere of influence.

For me at least, I'd like to give Jack the benefit of the doubt and take his words and this decision as an honest effort in trying to be a responsible social media company.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

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Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 4:12 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."

[deleted]

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

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Post by burfog » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 4:21 AM UTC

chillwaves wrote: post #631

throw_m239339 wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

It's ongoing. He had been stopped on a technicality related to deadlines, but a new ruling by the court gets him past that.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

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Post by fzeroracer » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 4:26 AM UTC

jonny_eh wrote: post #638

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…

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

I don't disagree. I absolutely think Twitter should draw lines. It's just intellectually dishonest to try and get around it by banning all political advertising, but it's obvious because Twitter doesn't want to take a stance on anything. So they want to act like they effectively take a stance on nothing.

Twitter isn't drawing a line in the sand as much as they are deciding to ban the whole beach and kick everyone off it.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

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Post by gbear605 » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 4:26 AM UTC

chillwaves wrote: post #626

stickfigure wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For example, say that the Green New Deal is a specific bill in a House committee. For some political reason (maybe the Democrats aren’t ready to vote on it yet), the Republican chair of the committee, Representative X, votes in favor of it. Thus an ad saying “Representative X voted in favor of the Green New Deal” is factually accurate while an ad saying “Representative X supports the Green New Deal” is debatably true.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

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Post by lucio » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 4:38 AM UTC

Isn't he implying at some point that people are not smart enough to think for themselves?

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

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Post by erichocean » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 4:50 AM UTC

airstrike wrote: post #492

erichocean wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Twitter is a public company. Correction: Twitter is a corporation with publicly-traded equity. A "public company" isn't the same as a "public good" or controlled by government and regulated as if it were owned by the entire republic

> Correction: Twitter is a corporation with publicly-traded equity.

Is this a joke? Literally The New York Times refers to Twitter as a "public company"[0], as does the rest of the known universe. Educate yourself.

[0] https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/11/07/live-blog-tracking-t... "Twitter began life as a public company on Thursday..."

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

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Post by RaiseProfits » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 4:54 AM UTC

anon73044 wrote: post #530

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…

>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 remai…

I think postmodernism leads straight to linguistics, not apathy. Much of politics is based around words like “democracy”, “freedom”, “the middle class”, “big government”. There is no truth around these things because they mean whatever is politically convenient in the moment. I mean sure you can define a pretty good general purpose term for your own use, but that’s not going to be how politicians use it. These should be seen as rhetorical terms, not inherently meaningful outside of the context of, say, a speech or and ongoing public discussion. It is far easier and cheaper to redefine yourself out of commitments than it is to actually stand for concrete values. The fix is to stand for concrete values that everyone can easily identify and discuss in concrete terms. It should be easy, then, to determine the difference between “waffling” and adjusting to a new situation because everyone can adjust together around a value consensus.

Note, PR takes literally the exact opposite tact to communication. We’re barreling deep into a post-truth world with an incredible amount of money fueling this. See also: non linear warfare, hypernormalization, Edward Bernays, why to buy a newspaper when it never makes money.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

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Post by woeirua » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 4:55 AM UTC

There is a third option here. Instead of a blanket ban, or selective enforcement of "fact checking," we could neuter the utility of online political ads by simply requiring similar disclosures to what you see on television and by limiting the ability of advertisers to target individuals. If advertisers could only target certain demographics (e.g. 18-35, 35-50, 50+) in larger regions (multiple zip codes, or even entire states), then the ads would be essentially equivalent to TV ads, which I would assume most people just completely ignore.

Otherwise you wind up in this super nebulous area where you have to either be an arbiter of the "truth" or what qualifies as a "political" advertisement.

Also, I would be in favor of an outright ban on all advertising until X days within the election, where X is < 60 days.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

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Post by irrational » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 4:56 AM UTC

"We considered stopping only candidate ads, but issue ads present a way to circumvent. Additionally, it isn’t fair for everyone but candidates to buy ads for issues they want to push. So we're stopping these too." - Jack Dorsey

So... what is the definition of an issue?