Twitter to ban political advertising • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#861

Post by dhimes » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:22 PM UTC

sjy wrote: post #842

Xelbair wrote: post #800

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> 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 wa…

> What prevents this centralized body from making politically motivated decisions? An established institutional culture of apolitical service, reinforced by respect for those who uphold it and consequences for those who violate it. The kind of thing that the U.S. still expects of its military, judiciary and public service, and the kind of thing that is corroded by political leaders showing contempt for it.

The US works by checks and balances. You can't point to, for example, the US military and say "see, we have the expectation with the military so it will transfer." You have to say, "See, the world holds respect for 's military despite centralized power."

Finding the value of $Centralized_Power might take a while.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#862

Post by pmart123 » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:22 PM UTC

vmlinuz wrote: post #662

cartoonworld wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mention that political ads are archived for anyone to scrutinize. I am not aware of this and my belief is that this is both not the case, and in fact very difficult to execute due to the ephemeral nature of internet advertising. For example, imagine my TIMECUBE PAC ponies up for 2500 targeted facebook micro-campaigns with very slight variations depending on the target demo with an ad spend of $20, $50K cost. Woul…

Do you mean something like this? It doesn't go into exact details, but it does exist... https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=all&ad_t...

Yes, exactly. This is at least granular enough to see location, gender, type of message, etc. previously with TV or old media, we couldn’t access who politicians were targeting with ads. Now we can. I don’t see how this isn’t an improvement?

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#863

Post by spunker540 » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:23 PM UTC

yoavm wrote: post #784

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…

But these really aren't the type of lies that people consider fake news. Yeah, all the things you've written are facts, and their interpretations are what we call opinions. I agree with you that all of these statements, since they're true, should be allowed without a question. People still need to think and be critical. I just took a look at a long list of lies by your current President. It has nothing to do with fac…

I know trump tells a lot of blatant lies (I think most Americans recognize this), but if you’re a Trump fan you’ve been hearing Democrats calling Trump a traitor, a dictator, a Russian-pawn and colluder and a criminal long before any of those titles could be considered “facts” (they mostly still cannot be called facts, though the Ukraine call may have changed that).

Yes Trump tells a lot of lies, but I also think each side of the aisle tends to ignore their own hyperbole (or at least fail to appreciate when the other side is hearing “lies”)

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#864

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:24 PM UTC

kortilla wrote: post #804

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…

> This is such blatant and obvious nonsense. Calm down. This isn’t productive to discussion. > that have been built into your system, you have ended up with a nation where the most powerful person For being the most powerful person, he doesn’t get much done and is in the process of potentially being impeached. Sounds like an argument in favor of the checks and balances and an argument in favor of less power being con…

[deleted]

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#865

Post by dhimes » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:25 PM UTC

kortilla wrote: post #804

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…

> This is such blatant and obvious nonsense. Calm down. This isn’t productive to discussion. > that have been built into your system, you have ended up with a nation where the most powerful person For being the most powerful person, he doesn’t get much done and is in the process of potentially being impeached. Sounds like an argument in favor of the checks and balances and an argument in favor of less power being con…

I'm sorry this comment is being downvoted so hard. I think it's excellent, apart from the "koolaid" bit.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#866

Post by intended » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:26 PM UTC

cf498 wrote: post #748

intended wrote: post #744

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can source it. I worked on modding a political forum from its laissez fairs days to its current operating philosophy. Bad speech regularly frowns out signal, and in times of crisis, will overwhelm the channel with emotion. It’s easier to make vague funny one liners which reach the top of the page, drowning out that 8 page report on the telecom industry. Bashing a political candidate? Channel crusher. Once the chann…

The people are still the same and they are still around, all you did was keeping your livingroom analog clean and your existing userbase from being replaced by racists. We dont have that luxury with society at large. These people dont just vanish once they are no longer on your site.

Nope - those people now don’t have a larger platform to indoctrinate people with cult arguments and mind hacks.

We’ve also isolated them, so it’s obvious to anyone objective who goes to their corner of the world what their priorities are.

Because once they are isolated, they create their own boards - and on those boards the metastatis of arguments is obvious.

Clear calls for ethnic cleansing, “the minorities did it.” Etc. were rife.

And here’s the kicker - even the mods on that sub forum started banning users.

So when the actual nazis have to ban nazis, is it counted as a win for the model?

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#867

Post by buboard » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:27 PM UTC

joshred wrote: post #485

lpolovets wrote: post #471

I'm still not sure what I think about the ban, but one potential downside is it will give people with lots of organic reach, like celebrities and incumbents, a big advantage. Before you could use organic reach to combat paid reach and vice versa, but now organic reach is the only thing that counts. For example, if The Rock runs for governor of California next year, it will be very hard for his opponents to compete (a…

Isn't organic reach a little more meritocratic than just throwing money into paid ads?

It shifts the burden away from twitter, thats why it s a smart move. In the grand scheme of things it s not really more meritocratic. A bunch of awareness campaigns will no longer be possible, so we won't know if they had merit

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#868

Post by criddell » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:28 PM UTC

_AzMoo wrote: post #566

mandevil wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is 100% legal to send mailers or put up billboards (which are not as regulated as shared spectrum for TV/radio) with the wrong election date to people, and this happens a couple of times every election cycle. Sometimes its government agencies, sometimes its a campaign (first example that popped up when googling: https://www.newsday.com/long-island/politics/spin-cycle/zeld... ). I don't think any of them has been i…

It's funny that I have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the comments to reach a discussion that I think really highlights the crux of the problem. We know that social media platforms will take down content that is illegal. The issue is that it's legal for political parties (or anybody) to post false or misleading statements for the purposes of political propaganda. AOC's hypothetical ad shouldn't be policed by…

We also shouldn't ignore that we are talking about ads. You can post political messages on Twitter, but Twitter won't promote that message in exchange for money. Facebook should follow suit.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#869

Post by __MatrixMan__ » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:28 PM UTC

jaimeyap wrote: post #827

yoavm wrote: post #784

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But these really aren't the type of lies that people consider fake news. Yeah, all the things you've written are facts, and their interpretations are what we call opinions. I agree with you that all of these statements, since they're true, should be allowed without a question. People still need to think and be critical. I just took a look at a long list of lies by your current President. It has nothing to do with fac…

This. The march to authoritarianism accelerates when people accept the meme that the truth is unknowable. So they simply accept the reality put forth by the autocrat. The most basic kind of truths are facts. We at least need to agree on those as best we can first. And then apply critical thinking on the the squishier stuff on top.

But if the truth is unknowable, how does the autocrat know it?

I've only met a few people who are skeptics about the existence of facts--but I find that they're likely to be skeptics about other things too.

I think that if it's a position you arrive at via honest philosophical inquiry, it's not a hazard at all.

The position to be wary of is where you still believe in the truth, but are so beleaguered by the cacophony of voices claiming to know it that you're willing to accept that somebody else has access to it if it means that you get to just peacefully be on their side and don't have to bother sorting through it all anymore.

That is too say: claiming to know the truth is often a proxy for being too intellectually lazy to bother forming a good argument, and I think that nihilism is preferable.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#870

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:28 PM UTC

mkr-hn wrote: post #860

TeMPOraL wrote: post #850

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we need to start teaching people to habitually attach provenance and confidence information to every fact (really: belief) they report, at least as much as practically possible? "Iraq had WMDs in 2000s" != "I strongly believe Iraq had WMDs in 2000s" != "I find it plausible that Iraq might have had WMDs in 2000s" != "According to that UN report, Iraq had WMDs in 2000s" != "According to NYT, which quotes that UN…

I've tried to get into this habit. Qualifications are great too because when someone comes back to say "you said X! You lied!" you can remind them of how carefully you qualified your statement. This is Circle of Competence applied[0]. It's admitting what you know you don't know so you don't make mistakes by being overconfident. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_competence

It's even more than that. By qualifying your statements, you let others evaluate them correctly.

So, for instance, if 'tptacek here says a factual statement about security (and there's no large thread contesting it), I'll treat it as gospel. But if he says he's unsure about it, or he read it somewhere, I know to attach less weight to it. I'll code in it my brain as "uncertain, but passed the sniff test of a relevant expert". Etc.

The same principle works in more mundane aspects of life. Whether a person believes something (and how much), or whether they're just reporting something they've read elsewhere, matters a lot for evaluating a factual statement independently.