Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Twitter to ban political advertising

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

791–800 of 1001 posts

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#791

Post by grego »

Hermel wrote: post #773
akie wrote: post #739

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In America, we understand that there is absolutely nothing more dangerous than an entity that feels entitled to control what is true. It might make things easier, and it might actually produce better results so long as the entity doing so is competent and benevolent, but nearly every structure in America is meant to serve as a bulwark for the cases in which the entity in power is precisely the sort that you do not…

> Despite the good intentions behind the decentralization of power and the checks and balances that have been built into your system, you have ended up with a nation where the most powerful person has blatantly and publicly broken all the norms and all the rules, who regularly and repeatedly tells the most outrageous lies, and where a very large amount of people stand behind him nevertheless because of large scale &…

Well, if you read factcheck.org or any other fact checker, or just read transcripts of Trumps speeches you can see that the negative spin is usually there for a reason.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#792

Post by toxik »

brigandish wrote: post #766
akie wrote: post #739

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In America, we understand that there is absolutely nothing more dangerous than an entity that feels entitled to control what is true. It might make things easier, and it might actually produce better results so long as the entity doing so is competent and benevolent, but nearly every structure in America is meant to serve as a bulwark for the cases in which the entity in power is precisely the sort that you do not…

> That is a supremely American way of looking at the world. It's based in European, and more specifically, British Enlightenment thinking, the apotheosis of which (with regard to freedom of speech) is On Liberty[0] by John Stuart Mill, an Englishman. To quote: > THE TIME, it is to be hoped, is gone by, when any defence would be necessary of the "liberty of the press" as one of the securities against corrupt or tyrann…

This to me seems not far from ayatollahs quoting scripture to justify their positions and policies. Surely thought has progressed in the last two hundred years?

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#793

Post by lr4444lr »

akie wrote: post #739
ralusek wrote: post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lowest level of truth telling is stating facts, but even stating facts can be extremely manipulative. If I were to say: "2x as many white Americans were killed by police as black Americans in 2018." This a true fact. If I take note of the fact that black Americans only constitute 13% of the population, then I can say "A black American is 2.3x as likely as a white American to be killed by police." This is also a t…

> In America, we understand that there is absolutely nothing more dangerous than an entity that feels entitled to control what is true. It might make things easier, and it might actually produce better results so long as the entity doing so is competent and benevolent, but nearly every structure in America is meant to serve as a bulwark for the cases in which the entity in power is precisely the sort that you do not…

We do have libel and slander laws, you know.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#794

Post by Xelbair »

moksly wrote: post #666

In Denmark we have laws in place that hold news paper editors responsible for printing truth. They don’t always succeed, but they try to, and when they do fail they admit it and apologise. This is what has kept our society well informed and critical thinking for a hundred years. It’s also allowed for different sides of things, because you can interpret things like socioeconomic statistics and facts differently and wr…

You can present facts differently to manipulate opinion - even simple things like percentage vs percentile, or increases chances by vs to - and even if they lie, the correction won't be reach everyone who read the original article.

Then there are opinion pieces - which by definition are opinion not facts.

I seriously have no good idea how to regulate that: international or national certifications are bound to be abused(lobbying in case of former, national interest in case of latter) and current system is absolutely dogshit.

Honestly it is because all news outlets optimize for one thing only - money - and money nowadays comes from one thing mostly: selling ads, or to be exact - selling access to serving ads to people with specific interests.

As long as selling ads en masse is the most profitable options the current system will exist. Clickbait/Yellow journalism will thrive as long as it's only purpose is to attract attention.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#796

Post by rkop »

One can only wonder if this policy would take place if these ads helped democrats in getting the office in the last election. I would say definitely not. It's silicon valley and this company's left-leaning CEO.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#797

Post by Xelbair »

ralusek wrote: post #685
moksly wrote: post #666

In Denmark we have laws in place that hold news paper editors responsible for printing truth. They don’t always succeed, but they try to, and when they do fail they admit it and apologise. This is what has kept our society well informed and critical thinking for a hundred years. It’s also allowed for different sides of things, because you can interpret things like socioeconomic statistics and facts differently and wr…

The lowest level of truth telling is stating facts, but even stating facts can be extremely manipulative. If I were to say: "2x as many white Americans were killed by police as black Americans in 2018." This a true fact. If I take note of the fact that black Americans only constitute 13% of the population, then I can say "A black American is 2.3x as likely as a white American to be killed by police." This is also a t…

>>> In America, we understand that there is absolutely nothing more dangerous than an entity that feels entitled to control what is true. It might make things easier, and it might actually produce better results so long as the entity doing so is competent and benevolent, but nearly every structure in America is meant to serve as a bulwark for the cases in which the entity in power is precisely the sort that you do not want to be making those decisions. And to be frank, Europe should probably be more wary of that.

In my honest opinion - every law should be made with assumption that in the future, or even now, an actor will exists that will abuse it to the utmost limits.

One of reasons i am vehemently against article 13 in Europe, or anti-hate speech laws(as those can be abused to basically turn into censorship laws - while doing absolutely nothing but hiding the symptoms of systematic problems).

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#798

Post by kaolti »

moksly wrote: post #666

In Denmark we have laws in place that hold news paper editors responsible for printing truth. They don’t always succeed, but they try to, and when they do fail they admit it and apologise. This is what has kept our society well informed and critical thinking for a hundred years. It’s also allowed for different sides of things, because you can interpret things like socioeconomic statistics and facts differently and wr…

The idea that we can mandate people telling the truth is laughable. The reason it seems to work in Denmark is probably because honesty is a social norm there.

Secondly, there is no absolute, objective truth and there never will be.

The best we can do is to individually strive for telling the truth and hope for the best.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#799

Post by ohduran »

moksly wrote: post #666

In Denmark we have laws in place that hold news paper editors responsible for printing truth. They don’t always succeed, but they try to, and when they do fail they admit it and apologise. This is what has kept our society well informed and critical thinking for a hundred years. It’s also allowed for different sides of things, because you can interpret things like socioeconomic statistics and facts differently and wr…

I can twist that, and indeed I do, by quoting somebody telling a lie. I'm positive infotainments do it all the time: such and such people said that the Earth is flat because so and so.

People are so gullible, and some would argue that if they fall for things like that, it's on them. In my opinion, Twitter is getting into a muddy situation with this: what is "political", what is "advertising"... and what is "paid", are all terms that could have different interpretation.

One could argue that Twitter may have just said "hey you, if this is illegal, send a court order and will take it down, otherwise everything stays", forcing governments to actually define what goes and what doesn't, instead of relying on for-profit companies to tell us what we can see and what we can't.

But that train departed so long ago.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#800

Post by Xelbair »

akie wrote: post #739
ralusek wrote: post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lowest level of truth telling is stating facts, but even stating facts can be extremely manipulative. If I were to say: "2x as many white Americans were killed by police as black Americans in 2018." This a true fact. If I take note of the fact that black Americans only constitute 13% of the population, then I can say "A black American is 2.3x as likely as a white American to be killed by police." This is also a t…

> In America, we understand that there is absolutely nothing more dangerous than an entity that feels entitled to control what is true. It might make things easier, and it might actually produce better results so long as the entity doing so is competent and benevolent, but nearly every structure in America is meant to serve as a bulwark for the cases in which the entity in power is precisely the sort that you do not…

>>> This is such blatant and obvious nonsense. You philosophize on basis of the assumption that central authorities ('government') by definition cannot be trusted, and we should therefore be wary of anything that reeks of centralized decision making.

This should be basic assumption of the all laws. Remember early 20th century and legal takeovers of governments by warmongering maniacs in Europe?

It was legal, there was trust toward government. All it took was a single group to take over Germany and start WW2.

Even if no one will abuse the law currently, you have absolutely no guarantees(as democracy is popularity contest) that no one will try to abuse them in future.

>> That is a supremely American way of looking at the world.

Not really, it is very prevalent in Europe too - especially Eastern Europe which suffered under Russian communist occupation. Mostly because it was the case in those countries - the populace still remembers government actively working against people.

>> Despite the good intentions behind the decentralization of power and the checks and balances that have been built into your system, you have ended up with a nation where the most powerful person has blatantly and publicly broken all the norms and all the rules, who regularly and repeatedly tells the most outrageous lies, and where a very large amount of people stand behind him nevertheless because of large scale & organized disinformation campaigns by the likes of (decentralized) propaganda entities like Fox News.

>>> How does your system deal with that then? Not very well, it seems.

It works perfectly... for those in power. From citizens perspective it is a nightmare.

>> Wouldn't it be great if you would have a powerful centralized body that can say "Ehm, you guys keep on telling outrageous lies, we're going to forbid it and if you keep in doing it you'll be slapped with a fine that really hurts and your CEO might have to go to jail"?

What prevents this centralized body from making politically motivated decisions? If we go to the extremes we have examples in history - heresy trials, censors in communist Russia, and even current example - China.

One could argue for centralized body of such power in only a single case - system transition by force with benevolent ruler that will dissolve itself after transition.

Good Luck with that.

Post reply on HN