Zuckerberg doubles down on Facebook political ads policy after Twitter ban • Hacker News Board

Re: Zuckerberg doubles down on Facebook political ads policy after Twitter ban

#111

Post by mattnewton » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 2:52 PM UTC

Traster wrote: post #4

>Ads can be an important part of voice - especially for candidates and advocacy groups the media might not otherwise cover so they can get their message into debates It's interesting how hard Zuck is working to try and conflate the idea of 'free speech' with paid advertisements. To put it another way, if advertising on Facebook is part of my free speech, surely Zuck must run my adverts despite the fact I have no mone…

Free != gratis

Free means legally unrestricted by the state here, not free of payment or of private guidelines.

Re: Zuckerberg doubles down on Facebook political ads policy after Twitter ban

#112

Post by ben509 » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 2:53 PM UTC

Traster wrote: post #98

bhupy wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is paid speech not free speech? The paid aspect is just a means to an end. Money itself should not be seen as speech, but speech that costs money is still speech. On a basic level, any self publishing on any form of media has a nonzero cost and you buy some service from some third party eventually. If free speech applied to you but not the person who supplied you a platform, then that freedom only exists in theor…

We're talking here about free speech versus compelled speech. There are no restrictions on your right to speech, but we also don't compel anyone to sell you an advertising platform. Anyone is free to choose to sell you a megaphone or not. In this case Zuck gets criticism for choosing to sell megaphones to people he knows are going to use those megaphones to lie. The case Zuck wants to make is that he should be free f…

> The case Zuck wants to make is that he should be free from the consequences of choosing to take money to distribute lies.

The "free from consequences" argument is a thin rationalization for political thuggery. You can't make your case intellectually, so you're going to go after people's livelihoods.

Re: Zuckerberg doubles down on Facebook political ads policy after Twitter ban

#113

Post by bhupy » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 2:53 PM UTC

tghw wrote: post #106

bhupy wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is paid speech not free speech? The paid aspect is just a means to an end. Money itself should not be seen as speech, but speech that costs money is still speech. On a basic level, any self publishing on any form of media has a nonzero cost and you buy some service from some third party eventually. If free speech applied to you but not the person who supplied you a platform, then that freedom only exists in theor…

No one is saying paid speech is not free speech. Obviously it is. The flawed argument Zuck made is that in order to have free speech we must have paid speech. That's a self-serving fallacy. There's a difference between paying for printing costs and paying a middle man to distribute your message to an arbitrary number of people, especially when that middle man has zero accountability and zero marginal cost.

It looks like you've misrepresented not one, but two arguments.

> No one is saying paid speech is not free speech.

The parent to whom I was responding said "It's interesting how hard Zuck is working to try and conflate the idea of 'free speech' with paid advertisement", implying that they believe that paid speech is not free speech.

> The flawed argument Zuck made is that in order to have free speech we must have paid speech.

Zuck never said that. From the article, he is quoted as having said: "Ads can be an important part of voice - especially for candidates and advocacy groups the media might not otherwise cover so they can get their message into debates,"

Re: Zuckerberg doubles down on Facebook political ads policy after Twitter ban

#114

Post by quarkral » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 2:53 PM UTC

dtwest wrote: post #45

Most people saw what Twitter did and thought, Facebook is probably under some pressure to do the same. Mark Zuckerburg saw it and thought, we now have a monopoly on social media based political advertising! $$$

I don't think Twitter actually hade much political advertising at all before tbh. It's like Bing traffic compared to Google.

Re: Zuckerberg doubles down on Facebook political ads policy after Twitter ban

#115

Post by quarkral » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 2:55 PM UTC

adam12 wrote: post #7

Just ban all political ads.

sounds easy but in practice hard. You can run ads on political and social issues that directly correlate with one candidate's campaign. What about those ads?

But then you could also be running ads to push a public issue such as climate change independent of anyone's campaign.

How do you differentiate between the two?

Re: Zuckerberg doubles down on Facebook political ads policy after Twitter ban

#116

Post by ben509 » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 2:57 PM UTC

sjwright wrote: post #102

bhupy wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is paid speech not free speech? The paid aspect is just a means to an end. Money itself should not be seen as speech, but speech that costs money is still speech. On a basic level, any self publishing on any form of media has a nonzero cost and you buy some service from some third party eventually. If free speech applied to you but not the person who supplied you a platform, then that freedom only exists in theor…

You're arguing a point nobody is defending. Obviously it costs money to speak loudly. The question is whether political speech can withstand the age of overwhelming scale, extreme anonymity, weaponised psychology and machine learning. This is a problem far greater than literally anything that could be broadcast in a radio spot. And for now, the photocopiers and push pollers still exist no matter what happens with Fac…

> The question is whether political speech can withstand the age of overwhelming scale, extreme anonymity, weaponised psychology and machine learning.

Except no one has proposed banning bots, machine learning, or shutting down anonymous actors. Those are all boogeymen.

Any paid ad can be required to be transparent to whatever degree we want to impose on the advertiser.

That's why, honestly phrased, this question would be, "will my side continue to stay in power if the other side is allowed to get their message out?"

Re: Zuckerberg doubles down on Facebook political ads policy after Twitter ban

#117

Post by quarkral » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 2:57 PM UTC

readams wrote: post #2

We simultaneously fear the power of Facebook but then demand they become the final arbiter of the truth, censoring even the speech of our political leaders. Why did we think this was a good idea again? Ask China their opinion on the value of being the one to decide what is true.

When we're talking about whether Facebook should be fact-checking the lies of public servants, we're missing the point. We shouldn't be having public servants that are lying to us in the first place. By the way this isn't just referring to one political party, the other party lies or blatantly dodges around truths as well. I think our government is in much deeper shit than the tech industry is, and even though I agree Facebook needs some regulation, I wouldn't trust the government to do it.

Re: Zuckerberg doubles down on Facebook political ads policy after Twitter ban

#118

Post by sjwright » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 2:59 PM UTC

ls612 wrote: post #110

sjwright wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A system without restrictions favours the rich, it favours the dishonest, and it favours those who wield the best weaponized psychology. (And it favours most those with all three.) Your passing reference to platforms being open to a "variety of ideas" is—and I'm sorry in advance for the snark—but it's just adorable.

And a system with restrictions like you want favors the authoritarians, those with the best real world bullying/harassment operations, and those who are well connected. I’m sorry but liberal democracy isn’t the best form of government because the people are smart (they never have been), it’s the best form of government because the alternative is recurring political violence.

I'm sorry but liberal democracy doesn't infer a strict libertarian view on political campaign messaging.

I don't want to assume you're American, but your fatalistic view of government sure does point towards that. I suggest you spend some time looking at how other liberal democracies handle this challenge. Online political advertising remains a challenge everywhere but usually the same legal and ethical frameworks apply—even if the frameworks still fail at the margins.

And to be clear, my objection isn't to all online advertising but specifically to Zuckerberg defending Facebook's stance by appealing to free speech. I don't think any Government should force Facebook's hand; I think they should seek to protect their social license and act independently as Jack Dorsey recently did.

Re: Zuckerberg doubles down on Facebook political ads policy after Twitter ban

#119

Post by inscionent » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:01 PM UTC

geerlingguy wrote: post #73

dcchambers wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly many groups I am a part of have moved to facebook and have no interest in moving off of the platform. To be honest I think it's pretty terrible as a group platform. No proper discussion threads and it's hard to find stuff. But people don't have to pay to host a website/forum and there's virtually no barrier to join since most people have an account on facebook.com. The only reason I still use facebook is for th…

I've also found that my kids' school sometimes _only_ sends out notifications or surveys via Facebook, even though they have two other specific systems they pay for that are specifically made for parent/school communications.

A pubic school? This sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Re: Zuckerberg doubles down on Facebook political ads policy after Twitter ban

#120

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:02 PM UTC

ben509 wrote: post #116

sjwright wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're arguing a point nobody is defending. Obviously it costs money to speak loudly. The question is whether political speech can withstand the age of overwhelming scale, extreme anonymity, weaponised psychology and machine learning. This is a problem far greater than literally anything that could be broadcast in a radio spot. And for now, the photocopiers and push pollers still exist no matter what happens with Fac…

> The question is whether political speech can withstand the age of overwhelming scale, extreme anonymity, weaponised psychology and machine learning. Except no one has proposed banning bots, machine learning, or shutting down anonymous actors. Those are all boogeymen. Any paid ad can be required to be transparent to whatever degree we want to impose on the advertiser. That's why, honestly phrased, this question woul…

[deleted]