Twitter to ban political advertising • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#871

Post by intended » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:30 PM UTC

ajscanlan wrote: post #781

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…

>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. I see this all the time on Reddit in subs like /r/politics and /r/news, sarcastic quips get thousands of upvotes and dominate the discussion with no room for any dissenting opinions. Makes it real hard to find out who's being genuine in…

No where.

Recognize that political speech is too valuable for political actors to leave to its own ends.

They will create tools and ways to influence it, and the internet allows for maximal influence and personalization.

I suggest an entirely more radical approach in future.

Make a prediction on a topic of your interest. Ask others to do so as well. Put it up in a public location. Set a time limit.

After the time limit see who’s prediction came true.

Talk through action and proof. Any idle political conversation represents a poisoned pool or a soon to be poisoned pool.

Right now maximize for threat awareness and not for open conversations, because the bad actors have the bigger guns.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#872

Post by tripzilch » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:30 PM UTC

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…

> If you say "A black person is 2.3x as likely as a white person to be killed by police in America. American police are being racially discriminatory when killing civilians."

> This is a fact and a conclusion, and most news consists of facts and conclusions.

Journalists usually quote somebody else for the conclusion, they don't use themselves as a primary source. And if they're good they get multiple quotes from different people to give a view of the differing opinions.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#873

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

drak0n1c wrote: post #503

basilgohar wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citizens United is the example that shows it's more complicated than that. Once limits are removed, then the same power structures that make and keep powerful entities powerful can continue to be reenforced if checks are not put into place to limit the power money can have in being a vector or amplifier for free speech. What paying for expression has come to is that you can dominate discourse simply by paying more. S…

Ads sometimes help the underdog much more than they help the already-known incumbent - ads can put them both on equal footing if the volume is reasonable. I've discovered new small family restaurants I never would have noticed if I didn't get their postcard ads. Similarly, thanks to ads I've heard of new political candidates challenging long-time incumbent politicians - they may be spending much less than the incumbe…

Thats basically what feeds Google. There are no apple ads when you search for Apple

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#874

Post by novalis78 » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:39 PM UTC

hartator wrote: post #859

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…

And all of this is unfortunately actually hate speech in Denmark because you can’t have stats on races.

The naïveté of - in particular Western Europeans - with regard to an ultimate truth handed down by ‘official’ bodies is mind boggling. Getting closer to the truth is a process not a static decree and accepting and dealing with the exact opposite viewpoint to your own - especially when it hurts - is part of adulthood nurtured by free thinking individuals in a free society. Learning about deception and lie, manipulation and propaganda is an extremely important and never ending learning process. (Disclaimer: I am a Western European living in the US)

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#875

Post by tripzilch » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:43 PM UTC

navigatesol wrote: post #810

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…

> I just took a look at a long list of lies by your current President. The idea that one side tells lies, and the other only truth is part of the problem here. > You can't argue that it's some interpretation, or just half of the picture or anything like that. It's simply a bunch of words phrased as a fact but they never happened. "Russian collusion" appears to fit this description, yet I still read about it every day…

> > I just took a look at a long list of lies by your current President.

> The idea that one side tells lies, and the other only truth is part of the problem here.

This is just an observation about your current president, there is no "other side" to it.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#876

Post by CharlesColeman » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:47 PM UTC

Aperocky wrote: post #447

CharlesColeman wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What are your expression worth if you wouldn’t be able to pay a service, cellphone/internet connection/reddit gold to express that? How is paying ads different than paying a campaigner set up a loudspeaker in the middle of a city? Absolutes don't really work well in the real world: there are too many trade-offs to be balanced and too many positive goals that are at tension with each other. For instance, and absolut…

Free speech comes with downsides just like every other thing. The alternative is to censor some things and allow other things, which work fine until more and more things gets banned, sometimes out of good intention. I’m totally onboard with banning hate speech and so on, but we need a very hard line of freedom somewhere that no bans get to cross, to me, this crosses it

The word "censorship" has a lot of moral baggage, and using it here obscures more than it clarifies. Not all limits on speech are censorship. For instance, it's not "censorship" to insist everyone speak in turn, and to tell someone who's continuously shouting their opinion over others to shut up and let others speak. That scenario is very similar to putting limits on how much someone or some group can "pay for expression."

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#877

Post by tripzilch » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:47 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #855

madaxe_again wrote: post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wouldn't it be great if you would have a powerful centralized body No. It wouldn’t. When that kind of power (arbiter of truth) is placed in a single point, that point will become the highly contested point of control. Eventually, inevitably, the body would end up turned to some ruthless power of the day, and would serve as the most phenomenal propaganda machine. “The Ministry of Truth is pleased to announce that bo…

Ok, so a centralized system is as smart as the people working in the Ministry of Truth, but also creates a highly contested point of control. It's not guaranteed that it'll be smart, but ideally it can get as smart as possible for human beings. A decentralized system is not controllable directly, but can only be as smart as the mean of the population[0]. Also, it also has a mechanism of control - propaganda. It's not…

Regarding your [0], in my experience larger groups of people tend to behave somewhat less smart than their mean intelligence ...

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#878

Post by NeutralCrane » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:48 PM UTC

throwaway2048 wrote: post #852

ralusek wrote: post #763

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a strawman for multiple reasons. For one, you have suggested that pointing out outright lies does not suffer from many of the same issues as asserting truth. "American jobs are being taken by illegal immigrants from Mexico." Is this a lie? No. But is this disingenuous and misrepresenting much more significant contributors to job loss? Yes. Is it a lie then? "Transgender women are women." Is this a lie? Depen…

You don't have to capture every biased statement and bending of the truth to counter outright lies like "Obama was born in kenya" or "Trump was endorsed by the pope" Both of which are believed by huge amounts of Americans.

> You don't have to capture every biased statement and bending of the truth to counter outright lies like "Obama was born in kenya" or "Trump was endorsed by the pope"

You do if you want to make some kind of law about it. You are correct, there are plenty of instances where a story is blatantly false and could be taken care of by some kind of preventative action. But the distribution of possible lies is extremely long tailed. For every one of these instances, there are dozens where it is not entirely a lie, but not entirely the truth, or is biased, or a half-truth, or editorialized, or an extreme conclusion, etc. Libel and slander laws already exist, but are rarely invoked because of this reason. It is nigh impossible to create any kind of system or legislation that does more than what these laws already do, while also properly dealing with all of these edge cases.

I mean, even your examples could easily get around any kind of preventative measures by couching their language. Instead of "Obama was born in Kenya", it could be phrased "rumors have begun to circulate that Obama was in fact born in Kenya". The desired effect of planting this lie in people's minds is still successful, but with a few words there is now no way to create a framework that legally prevents people from spreading lies that way, that is also consistent and not overbearing.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#879

Post by asjw » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:50 PM UTC

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 Europe we understand the difference between being biased and lying.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#880

Post by claudiawerner » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 1:55 PM UTC

claudiawerner wrote: post #809

toxik wrote: post #792

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It has, but due to the orthodoxy of thinking in terms of the liberal conception of human rights in the US Constitution, other voices aren't listened to much - their views are different to the orthodoxy such that they are considered heretical and against liberty. It's a circular argument in the sense that because liberty and freedom are defined for the mainstream framework, any outside framework, in order to be accept…

I'm curious as to why this comment is being downvoted; if anyone could offer an explanation I'd be grateful to learn where I went wrong.