Twitter to ban political advertising • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#901

Post by Mangalor » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 2:30 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #835

mthoms wrote: post #726

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that (1) The Danes who wrote those laws were elected by the citizens in a fair and open democracy. (2) The enforcement (presumably) falls on their judicial system. One that is transparent, progressive and highly respected around the world. (3) That Denmark has one of the lowest rates of corruption in the world. (4) That Danes are free to pursue information elsewhere (as in the entire internet) if they don't li…

Denmark has a population of 6 million people with a homogeneous culture, ethnic composition (87% Danish descent, [0]) and physical location. Many problems are going to be faced to all Danes simultaneously. It is much easier to construct a shared agreement on what is true in such an environment. That they are a democracy is less of an issue than the fact they all face a very similar environment and can probably agree…

There's no requirement to have a "homogeneous culture" or specific ethnic composition in order to have a working democracy. Facts are facts, and with a free press, can be seen by anybody, of any race or culture. The real problem is with authoritarian cultures (which are an aspect of humanity, not specific ethnicities) imposing themselves on ordinary people.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#902

Post by gdy » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 2:37 PM UTC

Kiro wrote: post #823

belorn wrote: post #779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"just one in six Danes consider themselves a feminist" "The Best Countries for Women is a perception-based ranking based on the responses of nearly 9,000 women who filled out surveys for the 2019 Best Countries rankings. The ranking is derived from a compilation of five equally weighted country attributes: care about human rights, gender equality, income equality, progress and safety." Combined they make the statemen…

Labelling yourself a non-feminist and truly caring about gender equality is a paradox unless you have an incorrect view of what feminism is.

Or maybe you have incorrect view of what equality is.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#903

Post by rasz » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 2:38 PM UTC

endymi0n wrote: post #783

rasz wrote: post #730

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you know, keep the lie because "publicly apologize for using the inaccurate “Polish Death Camps” phrase does not apply in Germany as it would curb freedom of speech." https://polandin.com/38606816/apology-for-polish-death-camps...

Hey, count me in for solving this one gracefully! https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...

This is German copycat of Onion you linked :)

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#904

Post by guelo » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 2:40 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #850

jlg23 wrote: post #843

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The most basic kind of truths are facts. Except for that for a lot of "facts", according to Rousseau, we already have 4 truths: what you say, what I say, what we agree upon and what really happened. So, while the pursuit of truth is important, I'd argue that respect towards each other even when we cannot agree is the most important thing.

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…

> "NYT, which quotes that UN report, Iraq had WMDs"

You left out the last step,

!= Bush administration says Iraq had WMDs

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#905

Post by AJ007 » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 2:40 PM UTC

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…

I think this should be the top comment, not buried on (currently) page two. The debates about truth in political advertising and Facebook are about something different. Both are valid issues to discuss, but it’s off topic.

What matters when running for an elected office is visibility and recognition. This recognition and unpaid organic reach may have not been what won Trump the US Presidency, but there is little doubt it won him the republican primary.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#906

Post by pattrn » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 2:43 PM UTC

galangalalgol wrote: post #887

navigatesol wrote: post #813

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the great ironies of the state of media in America: almost everyone agrees that Fox News is extermely biased and sometimes dishonest. Yet CNN, ABC, CBS, NYT and MSNBC are bastions of truth. I mean, just a few weeks ago ABC posted a video from a Kentucky range and claimed it was fighting in Syria[0]. Is that simply horrible journalism, or a lie? [0] https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/15/media/abc-news-error-video/in..…

I think you may be in an echo chamber. Most of my coworkers watch fox news. Its even playing on tvs at work in the hallways and cafeteria. People chat about their latest dose of truth and the outrageous lies of cnn etc. I listen to npr on the way home to get the sam facts in a different light/bias and then resolve to ignore everything but local races. I wish high offices were still elected by lower offices down to th…

Not sure if you're referencing the constitution's original intent for state legislatures to elect senators. If you are, here's a good reference for anyone interested in the topic:

https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing...

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#907

Post by castlecrasher2 » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 2:43 PM UTC

sjy wrote: post #839

chr1 wrote: post #771

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think the centralized body would say that to fox and not to cnn? After all if there are about 50% people thinking that fox spreads lies and 50% people thinking cnn spreads lies the decision of centralized body could go any way. It is better to let everyone speak and everyone to make their own decisions

Why would you expect someone calling for tighter regulation of the media to give a free pass to CNN? I would expect regulators to be a thorn in the side of any commercial television network. They're in the business of selling entertainment for profit, not upholding community standards of truth, decency, etc.

>Why would you expect someone calling for tighter regulation of the media to give a free pass to CNN?

The side doesn't really matter, what matters is giving that power to government will lead to one side winning and entrenching themselves via said power. I believe it's better to let free citizens learn wrongly on their own than to pretend government can teach the so-called right things.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#908

Post by kazagistar » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 2:47 PM UTC

ralusek wrote: post #672

neltnerb wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you look at it too hard all "truths" become false eventually, and that can pave the way to apathy. Isn't the point of seeing the truth as non-binary that they cannot become false? Just less likely to be true? This seems intrinsically more amenable to changing one's mind on the truth of something, though I agree that not having an opinion on the truth of something is apathetic. Just because you strongly believe t…

I think what they mean by truths becoming false is rather that all certainties become uncertainties. Delving too deep in postmodernism is like taking all of your legos and melting them. If I want to have a conversation about free speech, and a postmodernist begins questioning if we even actually have free will, or if it's even valid to discuss morality if it's entirely possible we exist in a simulation...you haven't…

I would turn that around and say antipostmodernists are upset that they can't have their presuppositions without justifying their utility/value first.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#909

Post by kazagistar » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 2:50 PM UTC

jeffdavis wrote: post #580

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…

The problem with degrees of truth is that they aren't composable into an argument. I can chain together a handful of things that are 99% true and arrive at an absurd conclusion because the 1% is the interesting bit. In this context, the question is whether something is political speech or something else. What is included and excluded from that category will get pretty interesting. We saw the same thing with compelled…

Degrees of truth aren't some option you can choose, it's just an observation about how the world already works, where information is universally not perfect. The point is by acknowledging it, you will be more willing to update bad information and bad conclusions as you get updated information.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#910

Post by hailwren » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 2:56 PM UTC

pm90 wrote: post #693

hailwren wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that this is a policy that is hard to enforce because it is ambiguous. The system worked as intended if you think that the point was to make only the most well-financed and technically savvy advertisers able to receive a benefit. Laws don't have anything to do with this thread?

> as intended if you think that the point was to make only the most well-financed and technically savvy advertisers able to receive a benefit. Your argument is that breaking a law is expensive and only those with money can break it so why bother with laws. Beyond ridiculous. The example you’re using is also not convincing. Statistically insignificant amount of people know or care enough to watch F1 races.

> The example you’re using is also not convincing. Statistically insignificant amount of people know or care enough to watch F1 races.

We have 1 user on the internet vs $1 Billion in advertising budget. I'm going to trust that Philip Morris is better at quantifying the effect here.

> Your argument is that breaking a law is expensive and only those with money can break it so why bother with laws. Beyond ridiculous.

This still has nothing to do with laws. It's an important distinction to make between laws and corporate policy because one carries very high punishments whilst the other is mostly without recourse.

My argument is in no way proscriptive. Only descriptive.