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Zuckerberg doubles down on Facebook political ads policy after Twitter ban

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

#131

Post by docbrown »

missosoup wrote: post #88
sjwright wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claiming that we must be reliant on private corporations for free speech is a corruption of the very concept. I don't agree with your argument, but to the extent that there's any truth to it the remedy can only be to fix the underlying problem—not submitting to it. To be clear, my objection isn't to all online advertising but specifically to Zuckerberg defending Facebook's policy with an appeal to free speech. Obviou…

Claiming that one can meaningfully express free speech without relying on corporations is delusion. If you aren't wielding the megaphone that is twitter/fb/youtube/whatever, then you are not going to be heard. That's just a fact at this point. Social media has in fact lowered the barrier to entry for expressing speech to large audiences, because before social media there were only newspapers and TV networks that cost…

> If you aren't wielding the megaphone that is twitter/fb/youtube/whatever, then you are not going to be heard. That's just a fact at this point.

I disagree. This is only a blanket statement to be taken as fact.

Politicians have been doing town halls, focus groups, and public speeches for decades. Just because we suddenly have social media sites to project their voices to a mich larger audience doesn’t erase all of those. While spending on digital ads have gone up tremendously i’m sure, if we take them out of the equation, people will still be able to hear their candidates voices. Social media websites are not the be-all and end-all of political discourse.

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

#132

Post by dcchambers »

nicpottier wrote: post #121
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…

Agreed on all counts. It is the only reason I go to Facebook. As you said the irony is that it is worse in almost every way except sign up friction. The content isn't even being spidered in any way by Google or the like so discovering the content in these groups later is also nigh impossible. Just a travesty.

> The content isn't even being spidered in any way by Google or the like so discovering the content in these groups later is also nigh impossible.

This is huge too. It's so hard to archive the data on these closed platforms - especially if you need an account ot view the data. There's a massive loss of knowledge when these platforms inevitably shutter.

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

#133

Post by _cairn »

FillardMillmore wrote: post #122

I think the crux of the question raised here is: "Is there anything wrong, ethically or legally, with a social media site accepting payments in exchange for algorithmically amplifying the amount of people that see the paid-for content? Does the answer to this question depend on the veracity of the information presented in the content? If so, does Facebook have some sort of obligation to ensure that paid-for content i…

Agree wholeheartedly with how you posed the question, I would like to expand:

Should Adult (xxx) sites be held accountable for ads for male enlargement pills/snake oils? I personally don't think so. Is the answer to this problem to teach our population that blindly accepting what you read is safe (you can trust information posted on social media/public internet sites as fact) OR do we instead teach our citizens to filter information analytically and do research the way you are taught to in university for example?

Personally I think the former option is an intractable problem. Why try to make it safe for your population NOT to have to think instead of just teaching them how to think critically?

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

#134

Post by ls612 »

sjwright wrote: post #118
ls612 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ap…

So far as I can tell most other liberal democracies either handle the issue much the same way as the US does or they just flat out ban political parties that are too “fringe”.

I wouldn’t trust anyone who wanted to be the censor to be the censor.

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

#136

Post by WhompingWindows »

cj wrote: post #77

Are political ads labeled / presented any differently than regular ads on Facebook? The main issue I have with this is how Facebook strategically blends advertisements (which is often political during election cycles) together with organic non-sponsored content. Anecdote: My 84 year old grandmother spends 1-2 hours per day scrolling through Facebook's news feed. When I watch her do it, she pays ZERO attention to why…

Why can't FB charge a minimal subscription fee? For 2-3 bucks a year, wouldn't they keep the vast majority of users and simultaneously remove their dependence on shadowy advertisement dollars?

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

#137

Post by WhompingWindows »

gorgoiler wrote: post #79

Facebook could provide a quota of free advertising to political parties, and not allow them to buy any more outside their quota. This would be akin to government provided airtime (“Party Political Broadcasts”) as done in Canada, UK and Ireland. I’ve always felt nervous about the role of money in politics and removing the requirement for massive ad-spend budgets might bring us closer to a more moral democracy, and awa…

What about all the "independent" "non-affiliated" groups who are absolutely tied to a political party? How do you adjudicate those edge cases? It's the edge cases, IMO, that are the real bear here.

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

#138

Post by haolez »

_jal wrote: post #59
haolez wrote: post #49

I think Zuck's statement makes more sense than Jack's, where Jack said that "democracy might break if we allow those ads" (not with these exact words). It's weird to see a CEO making a statement like that, like if it was his role to protect democracy. I think Zuck sounded more professional and centered in this case.

The Zuckerbot is a functioning profit-maximizer, if that's what you mean.

I was referring to their statements. I think Jack might have omitted the part about democracy. Just announce the change and be done with it.

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

#139

Post by JKCalhoun »

samatman wrote: post #6

Facebook, the platform, is in trouble. It doesn't matter what the outcome is of the 2020 election season, or what Facebook does during it. They will be blamed for it. Buying Instagram and Whatsapp was farsighted, Facebook the company can cruise for awhile on those properties. The main site is bound to fall out of fashion, and soon. Can't be soon enough for my taste.

Agree but for the comment about buying Instagram and Whatsapp being farsighted. I think it practically guarantees they'll be broken up.

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

#140

Post by Traster »

bhupy wrote: post #108
Traster wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think you might be confusing the First Amendment with the principle of Free Speech. Per the First Amendment, Zuck can do whatever he likes with his platform. He can refuse to broadcast whatever he wants, just like CNN and other news networks. But just as important, he is free to NOT refuse to broadcast whatever he pleases. There are no legal consequences for that (outside of the narrow exceptions in Brandenburg v O…

I'm not confusing the two, there are inherently two parts to this. Because obviously, if you do buy the idea that we're literally just talking about the principle of free speech, then we have literally hundreds of lines of the facebook terms of service that we need to discuss - since those are limits on speech. In fact, the statement he put out on facebook literally says that his company's defence of free speech is not absolute.

The problem is, that it appears that buy buying a facebook advert you're essentially buying the ability for facebook to refuse to scrutinize you. The argument he's actually trying to make is:

>Should we block all political ads? Google, YouTube and most internet platforms run these same ads, most cable networks run these same ads, and of course national broadcasters are required by law to run them by FCC regulations.

But that's a lie. People aren't criticising Facebook for running the same ads that run on CNN. They're criticising facebook for running ads that CNN refuses to run. But instead, he completely fails to engage with the fact that cable networks have a different, coherent policy. Whilst Facebook's policy is that they're both a free speech platform, but also that they spend more money on getting harmful content off their platform than any other company in the world. That's the reason it's confusing - because the criticism of facebook isn't that its adhering to free speech principles, it's that its selectively using free speech as a defence when it suits them.

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