This is a good move but could go further, really wish FB and moreso Twitter would include a big switch in their settings that was just "Politics On/Off" hide all political ads, and tweets and retweets for people who just don't want to see that for mental health reasons or just because they're not there for that (e.g brand customer support workers) but they'd never do that because I suspect they ideologically think its more important to control the flow of political information that is broadcast to their users even if its at a great detriment to their users mental health.
Facebook to let users turn off political adverts
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Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
We just moved the problem one step away. If (for example) i classify my ad about climate-change as non-political. Can Facebook disagree with that?
Almost any topic is potential political.
But all facebook cares about, is not to be blamed again for fake news on their network are responsible again for a not desired outcome of the election. So this is just one step towards that image, nothing more.
Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
I tried muting people during the 2016 cycle. It worked for sure, my feed was less political garbage. It turns out my feed was also mostly empty. I quit and have been off ever since.
Yeah, sounds very familiar. Muting all the annoying posts just left pictures of peoples food
Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a regex-complete problem.
I mean you could probably do with a 20 word filter list for 90 percent sucess rate.
Not even close, I have 3000 accounts blocked/muted on twitter and 300+ words and still my timeline is drenched in politics.
Also now some hashtags are able to bypass the mutes if Twitter deems it important you see them.
But Twitter knows exactly what is politics because they curate their trends to it so could easily block it out entirely for me but wont for ideological reasons.
Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts
#45I 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?
> Wouldn't that disproportionately remove only young urban democrats from political advertising?
If that were the case, it might actually be beneficial to Democrats since they wouldn't waste money advertising to those people meanwhile Republicans wouldn't be able to change their minds with advertising.
Or it could go the other way, and inability to constantly be reminding those people how great the dems are and how important it is to vote means the turnout will be lower among those who turned off ads than if they hadn't been able to.
(And I agree with everyone saying that FB cares more about making bank from the election than about actually improving the situation.)
Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts
#46I 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 und…
American politics became Americans nightly entertainment, its a saturated behemoth with an insatiable appetite. It will not be long until election campaigns are non-stop. There's simply too much money in this game.
Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts
#47I 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 c…
A couple of days ago, I noticed that my favorite science fiction author Greg Egan has published a new book. He listed several distributors which are equally good for him. When I saw that one them displayed a huge BLM banner, my decision where where to buy was set.
I also don't live in the US, but similar issues exist in many countries, including mine, and I appreciate any company publically showing their support for this cause (and other causes important to me). Of course some companies support those causes only for publicity reasons. But it's still positive signaling.
Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts
#48This is a good move but could go further, really wish FB and moreso Twitter would include a big switch in their settings that was just "Politics On/Off" hide all political ads, and tweets and retweets for people who just don't want to see that for mental health reasons or just because they're not there for that (e.g brand customer support workers) but they'd never do that because I suspect they ideologically think it…
I have been asking for this for a long time. I am happy to see it is gaining traction in some form.
Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts
#49This is a good move but could go further, really wish FB and moreso Twitter would include a big switch in their settings that was just "Politics On/Off" hide all political ads, and tweets and retweets for people who just don't want to see that for mental health reasons or just because they're not there for that (e.g brand customer support workers) but they'd never do that because I suspect they ideologically think it…
Maybe we should put some effort into making political discourse less damaging to your mental health instead of enabling large parts of a democratic country to just shut themselves off from politics.
Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts
#50This is absolutely pointless... my guess is This is all exactly within the Facebook playbook.
While I am a nerd hence why an avid reader of HN.
My wife is the opposite but if I or someone else points out a useful tip which takes little effort but makes something better/easier it will be read.
Also we need to remember politics in the western nations is still something most people can talk about or mention and put a poster up or wear a badge. The biggest issue will be people avoiding you thinking you might bore them on the subject.
Go to a number of countries in the world. Random political adverts being spotted on your feed may cause you much grief and possibly harm in some way.