Twitter to ban political advertising • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#971

Post by Nasrudith » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 8:54 PM UTC

m1sta_ wrote: post #619

SirensOfTitan wrote: post #102

From what I recall Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez questioned Zuckerberg, she questioned along the anecdote of: If I purchase ads on Facebook saying Republicans support the Green New Deal (but they don't), will Facebook take the ads down? I often see these clean, easily provable anecdotes from those who support some kind of suppression of speech. I worry though: often the truthfulness of real world statements are difficu…

It's not the suppression of speech. It's the regulation of speech amplification, especially paid amplification. The concept of fraud and libel are related too. It is fraudulent to claim you are someone that you are not.

Although a popular meme like the platform/publisher duality it isn't a valid concept legally - at least in the US conception. Not any more than being able to get away with specific death threats as "a promise". That sort of "marginal loophole" is frowned upon in the jurisprudence period. The prevailing form of restrictions that have survived are specific and tailored invalidations of forms of speech protection - threats, fraud, and libel.

Not to say that special pleading for abridging rights hasn't embedded itself via ex-nilho doctrines turned precedent.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#972

Post by Nasrudith » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 9:01 PM UTC

api_dolla wrote: post #556

ctdonath wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about ... freedom of speech? Quit trying to micro manage everyone. Accept payment to publish messages on a competitive platform - and let readers, being mostly competent adults, figure content out themselves.

The entire point is that more money doesn’t lead to disproportionately more speech. And if readers were ‘mostly competent’, and able to decipher the truth, we wouldn’t even be having this convo

I am sorry but when has money not meaning more speech ever been true in practice? Even in Communist Dictatorships it didn't hold as those with power also had money effectively.

Printing presses and distribution were expensive - even more so back in the day and before their invention it held - arguably even more so.

It may be a good ideal for having ideas standing on their own weight but a precedent it is not.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#973

Post by shkkmo » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 9:40 PM UTC

ralusek wrote: post #746

akie wrote: post #739

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Trump has been able to do very little, and this is a good thing. However, what he has done is effectively demonstrate that the executive branch has too much centralized power, not too little. In regards to whether or not it would be great if we had a powerful centralized body that could determine what constitute outrageous lies worthy of a fine, no, for the reasons I've already stated, I do not think that this would…

Trump has accomplished much more than you think he has. He has done a good job of using controversy to divert people from a great deal of the significant changes he has made via executive authority to the various government agencies under his control.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#974

Post by shkkmo » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 10:06 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #621

philipov wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the Christians are bullying the athiests, and the agnostic does nothing, then yes, they are implicitly supporting the actions taking place in their vicinity. If they're just all sitting around doing nothing, the implicit support is of them sitting around doing nothing.

Every moment you're not actively working for the FBI homicide department, you're commiting implicit murders.

If you are present for a murder and you do nothing to either prevent it or report it, then yes, you are complicit in the murder.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#975

Post by grandmczeb » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 10:24 PM UTC

cartoonworld wrote: post #913

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...

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 Hous…

There's an api here: https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/api/?source=archive-lan...

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#976

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 10:31 PM UTC

yoavm wrote: post #784

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…

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…

[deleted]

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#977

Post by mensetmanusman » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 12:17 AM 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…

America is huge, it has to rely on the states to fight back.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#978

Post by mensetmanusman » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 12:35 AM UTC

vorpalhex wrote: post #745

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…

> This died with Facebook, YouTube and the non-editorial entertainment “news” and as a result we have anti-vaxxers, flat-earthers and what not. Are you literally blaming YouTube for flat earthers in Denmark? The issue is that all regulators are human, and all humans have biases. No man is fit to play the censor.

Many of the flat earthers I have interacted with are actually doing it tongue and cheek as performance. It is a meme/troll many levels deep if you look into it.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#979

Post by brigandish » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 1:24 AM UTC

tempodox wrote: post #836

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…

> ...document describing the markup rules https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc

I thank you, good sir!

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#980

Post by brigandish » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 1:31 AM UTC

notSupplied wrote: post #912

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?

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.

If you're looking for quotes from smart, dead, non-white guys I have this one from Frederick Douglass:

> To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.

Not that their being smart, their ethnicity, nor their being alive or dead has any relevance to the content of their speech.

Aside from the obvious rebuttal already given by pointing out it's not American to think the press should be free, further "payload" was in the link provided. I'd encourage you to read, what is in my opinion and of many others, the greatest work on freedom of speech.