Twitter to ban political advertising • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#911

Post by subsaharancoder » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:04 PM UTC

subsaharancoder wrote: post #482

Would a pro-life advert, which has obvious political ramifications depending on which side of the divide you are on, qualify as a political ad? I ask because Twitter has actively been blocking/stopping pro-life organizations from running ads with zero transparency on how the decision was arrived at or which policy it violates, but doesn't apply the same standard to pro-choice groups and in fact gives them carte blanc…

Vijay Gadde of Twitter:

here's our current definition: 1/ Ads that refer to an election or a candidate, or 2/ Ads that advocate for or against legislative issues of national importance (such as: climate change, healthcare, immigration, national security, taxes)

https://mobile.twitter.com/vijaya/status/1189664481263046656

Just shut down Twitter and let's move on

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#912

Post by notSupplied » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:10 PM UTC

toxik wrote: post #792

brigandish wrote: post #766

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I have the same experience with people dropping John Stuart Mill quotes in particular as if that was all that was needed to win the argument.

Those are elegantly worded claims and conclusions, not compelling arguments and evidence to ponder.

The mic very much did not drop after you quoted some smart dead white guy. Please, we're still waiting for the actual payload.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#913

Post by cartoonworld » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:12 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...

Well thats certainly something to dig into. Thank you.

However, this search box doesn't adequately explain who is seeing these ads. It does expose which state the ads are shown within, and the general demo (age, gender), but if I am not mistaken the ad targeting service is way more fine grained than this. Isn't this stuff down to the zip+4 or even, "near a Starbucks"? Facebook faced a lawsuit[0] in 2019 for Fair Housing Act violations, the complaint alleges that facebook let people advertise housing while excluding "Hispanic", "New Parents", etc in the target demographics.

It also looks like I can search back 7, 60, 30, 90 days or "All Impressions". There's no way a librarian had any input in this.

In addition, I suspect that if I were to actually do analysis here Facebook would start demanding PII, especially if I start crawling the searches. Is there an API for this? The infinite scrolling is IMO useless for any real use cases such as monitoring political ads in general.

It does appears as if I could use this search box to find one ad campaign or all of one org's campaigns. But I kind of suspect I'd need a whole bunch of grad students to do data collection?

Do you know if other platforms also expose some political ads?

[0] https://www.salon.com/2019/08/21/digital-redlining-facebooks...

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#914

Post by jeegsy » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:13 PM UTC

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…

I strongly prefer what we have now to the authoritarian "society" you have described. It sends shivers down my spine to think that there are westerners advocating such things. You can always move to China, they have everything you sound like you want

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#915

Post by jlg23 » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:14 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…

Let's just talk in Quechua then, evidentiality is engraved in their grammar!(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quechuan_languages)

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#916

Post by spunker540 » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:17 PM UTC

tekkk wrote: post #888

spunker540 wrote: post #863

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 eac…

It's simple reciprocation from game-theory perspective: when the other party lies and gains advantage, you do it too. But I feel Republicans are way more untruthful than the Democrats and simply bring down the level of discussion for everyone. And I don't know why is it, that majority of Americans are so accustomed to lying that they tolerate it from politicians. In Finland if politicians get caught with outright lyi…

I know Trump is in a world of his own, but most often the “lies” are not lies to the speaker or the speaker’s fans. For example Obama’s “if you like your plan you can keep it” regarding Obamacare. It turned out not to be 100% true. To Democrats he was well-intentioned and over-optimistic and couldn’t deliver his promise (probably due to Republican obstructionism) while Republicans had always considered that a lie.

If 50% of the country believes something is a lie and 50% believe it’s mostly true, is it really a lie? The truth is most political “lies” are only considered lies by the opposite party.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#917

Post by infinitezest » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:17 PM UTC

Xelbair wrote: post #797

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 no…

I'm really surprised that _this_ isn't a more popular take-away among Trump detractors, particularly with regard to things like privacy and government surveillance. "Finding the right balance between security and privacy" sounds a lot different depending on who's mouth it's coming out of and who controls the levers.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#918

Post by infinitezest » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:22 PM UTC

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #802

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…

> So not only are facts capable of telling a narrative, but it gets much more complicated once you start introducing conclusions. "start introducing conclusions". So not just stating facts after all?

I think OP is saying that facts alone can be used to spin a narrative. Inserting conclusions makes it even worse.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#919

Post by nicpottier » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:25 PM UTC

product50 wrote: post #345

nicpottier wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm totally fine banning all political ads, let's do it!

Then only a few named candidates will have most of the leverage. Is that what we want?

Surely we can come up with some way of giving candidates a platform to share their ideas? The current system is broken, we should think of ways of fixing it instead of just saying we can't do better.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#920

Post by cartoonworld » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 3:26 PM UTC

pmart123 wrote: post #862

vmlinuz wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Wow no!

TV ads are broadcast and you can have one grad student check some boxes per market, they just need an extension cord and a bunch of TVs to watch.

Internet ads can have a spend of one and they're gone, or behind this really slick infinite scroll. If 40 people see the ad really whats the likelihood of gleaning useful information?

The Old World Mad Men style Ad is blasted from the antenna, printed, or plastered on a billboard. With Old Media you can tell easily who's being targeted because you can't narrow down based on "Likely to be Pregnant". A TV commercial is incapable of pranking your roommate[0], this stuff is a wholly new category, and its profitability is larger than Uber's 2019 Q2 posted losses.

While this handy search page is for sure an improvement over Facebook's previously completely opaque ad market, I disagree that this is an improvement over the Old Media.

I'd also imagine the Old Media ads have a lawyer or compliance person overseeing the business, and while I know FB has the lawyers I doubt anyone is motivated or empowered to hit the brakes.

[0] https://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking...