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Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#21

Post by MatekCopatek »

Traster wrote: post #12

Here is his full Op-Ed: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/06/17/facebook-vo... Isn't it bizarre that Facebook has decided it's going to censor exactly 1 type of political view. If you want to discourage someone from voting - a perfectly legitimate position (not necessarily one I whole heartedly agree with, but I think arguments can be made, for example by Russell Brand in 2015[1]). It just seems like pure un…

Exactly!

And to add to your argument - their encouragement isn't entirely neutral, it will cause a potential turnout increase in the population that uses Facebook. If anyone is bothered by priests in church telling believers to go vote - this is the same thing applied to a different focus group.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#22

Post by pwdisswordfish2 »

What if someone were to develop an app, browser extension, etc. that automatically disabled political ads in Facebook.

Why not disable political ads by default and if users want them, then they can enable them. Otherwise this is nothing more than the old "opt-out" trick, as used for email spam and now ubiquitous in internet marketing. The choice should not be to "opt-out", it should be to "opt-in".

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#23

Post by m463 »

john___matrix wrote: post #4

I wonder if it'll be a obscurely named toggle hidden away in a settings sub page somewhere just so they can say they've offered the option. Unlikely of course but it would be nice if they were turned off by default and they offered users the option to turn them on with a disclaimer about how inaccurate and shady many of them are.

> I wonder if it'll be a obscurely named toggle hidden away in a settings sub page somewhere just so they can say they've offered the option.

Wouldn't that disproportionately remove only young urban democrats from political advertising?

also, how come the news of this change only came from a non-american news source?

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#24

Post by ManlyBread »

simion314 wrote: post #16

I am not from US, I hate FB during electoral campagins not because of paid ads but because of people sharing tons of political crap, I would like to hide all political post and shares of my friends and ads.

Hopefully at some point someone notices that politics are a huge turn-off for many people. I live in Poland and EA decided they need me to see a statement for BLM in one of their games. What's the value of that? I have zero influence over the things happening in US and it's not like the topic is not all over the internet anyway. If it weren't for the fact that I play that game with friends I would just uninstall it completely.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#26

Post by martin-adams »

pwdisswordfish2 wrote: post #22

What if someone were to develop an app, browser extension, etc. that automatically disabled political ads in Facebook. Why not disable political ads by default and if users want them, then they can enable them. Otherwise this is nothing more than the old "opt-out" trick, as used for email spam and now ubiquitous in internet marketing. The choice should not be to "opt-out", it should be to "opt-in".

I suspect the political parties would start screaming that Facebook are limiting access to freedom of speech.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#27

Post by gonzo41 »

m463 wrote: post #23
john___matrix wrote: post #4

I wonder if it'll be a obscurely named toggle hidden away in a settings sub page somewhere just so they can say they've offered the option. Unlikely of course but it would be nice if they were turned off by default and they offered users the option to turn them on with a disclaimer about how inaccurate and shady many of them are.

> I wonder if it'll be a obscurely named toggle hidden away in a settings sub page somewhere just so they can say they've offered the option. Wouldn't that disproportionately remove only young urban democrats from political advertising? also, how come the news of this change only came from a non-american news source?

Facebook is going to make a staggering amount of money up until November this year in the US. That's why its not getting airplay in the states.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#28

Post by chippy »

simion314 wrote: post #16

I am not from US, I hate FB during electoral campagins not because of paid ads but because of people sharing tons of political crap, I would like to hide all political post and shares of my friends and ads.

This is the problem with reddit also and twitter - indeed all social media.

The main problem is that US political elections "season" runs for 2 years! So out of every 4 years, half of the time is campaigning season so it means that the rest of the worlds social media is polluted with "tons of political crap" 50% of the time.

For US folks: look at how other western democracies run their electoral campaigns to help understand this. They tend to be much much shorter in duration. For international users - remember that for Americans, it's normal to be swamped in political campaigning pollution for half of their time.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#29

Post by martin-adams »

Raed667 wrote: post #25

Here Facebook is making a stand on what is political and what is not? Is climate change political? Are immigration policies political? etc..

You need to be authorised to run ads about politics, so this is simple way for them to know if it's a political ad or not. The challenge is if advertisers miss classify what the ad it about, which then is subjective to Facebook as you say.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#30

Post by sshagent »

simion314 wrote: post #16

I am not from US, I hate FB during electoral campagins not because of paid ads but because of people sharing tons of political crap, I would like to hide all political post and shares of my friends and ads.

tell me about it. On my browser its quite nice as i have the "F.B. Purity" addon, that lets me choose words to filter entire posts by. So i add both common political part words ( tories, labour, conservative etc ) and my feed is a lot nicer. Its just a shame when i use fb on my phone i get to read that stuff. Muting people for 30 days is a reasonable start i guess, but i'd much rather filter by content
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