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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

#101

Post by Nightshaxx »

nradov wrote: post #96
cosmodisk wrote: post #94

Political adverts isn't the main problem. The key issue is that the candidates can say virtually anything they want irrespectively whether it's true or not.The blame game is huge as well and shouldn't be allowed at all. Until all this is fixed, there's not much hope for any ON/OFF settings on social media.

How would you propose to fix that? Should candidates only be allowed to make "true" statements?

Who verifies what is true or not? Much of the media has a bias either way. Who is the arbiter of absolute truth? Who decides when a theory is mature enough to be absolute fact?

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#102

Post by cosmodisk »

nradov wrote: post #96
cosmodisk wrote: post #94

Political adverts isn't the main problem. The key issue is that the candidates can say virtually anything they want irrespectively whether it's true or not.The blame game is huge as well and shouldn't be allowed at all. Until all this is fixed, there's not much hope for any ON/OFF settings on social media.

How would you propose to fix that? Should candidates only be allowed to make "true" statements?

It's a complex issue but having some sort of mechanism where you can't just say:'Poland will attack the US next year,we need to prepare for it!!' and then move on as nothing happened, would help. In the the same way as CEOs can't just walk around talking whatever shit they want to just because they've got fiduciary responsibility,some good practices could be applied to candidates.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#103

Post by pjc50 »

foldr wrote: post #67
ManlyBread wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>What's the value of that? I have zero influence over the things happening in US BLM isn't only relevant to the US. It's not as if Poland doesn't have any issues with racism. I actually think this has been one of the positive effects of the high profile of BLM. Too many European countries have been content to tell themselves that racism is an American problem which they don't have.

Poland is extremely .. traditional about this kind of thing; racism is hardly mentioned because Poland was never a colonial power and has in the modern era been a country that people emigrate from rather than immigrate to. So the non-white population of Poland is tiny.

More relevant to Poland is the conservative consolidation of power and rollback of LGBT rights.

(And if you want to start a really uncomfortable discussion about racism in Poland, the Holocaust will definitely do that)

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#104

Post by braythwayt »

mcherm wrote: post #92
m463 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

> also, how come the news of this change only came from a non-american news source? Well, did you read the first two sentences of the article? > Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg says users will be able to turn off political adverts on the social network in the run-up to the 2020 US election. In a piece written for USA Today newspaper, he also says he hopes to help four million Americans sign up as new voters. The USA To…

I’m not a statistician, but I know my internet memes, and the one that comes to mind is, “n=1.”

Especially considering that there are a LOT of factors driving why one of many articles describing the same thing would get upvoted. Choice of headline and time of day come to mind as factors that sometimes outweigh “original source.”

My own n=handful experience is that I can sometimes post one of my own essays, get crickets, and then it will get a second chance, and BOOM, front page.

At least one of those times, the essay has gotten traction elsewhere, like Twitter and Reddit, so one possible explanation is that sometimes people upvote articles about a subject they have seen elsewhere.

If that were the case, it would favour secondary articles over the original.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#105

Post by coding_lobster »

prepend wrote: post #95

Facebook has a really interesting feature that I haven’t seen in Twitter, Google, or others. I can block all ads from a page. Whenever I see a political ad, I can choose “don’t show me any more ads from XXX” and it actually works. This was a godsend during the primary and I wish was available in other platforms. I’m surprised they have this feature and have expected it to go away for years.

Doesn't such a feature contribute to the creation of echo chambers? It's hard to tell when it comes to something like ads as they usually aren't a great source of information.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#106

Post by cosmodisk »

Nightshaxx wrote: post #101
nradov wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you propose to fix that? Should candidates only be allowed to make "true" statements?

Who verifies what is true or not? Much of the media has a bias either way. Who is the arbiter of absolute truth? Who decides when a theory is mature enough to be absolute fact?

Media bias is probably as big,if not bigger, problem as well. Media should be about facts not about ideological wars on left or right.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#107

Post by Tenoke »

prepend wrote: post #95

Facebook has a really interesting feature that I haven’t seen in Twitter, Google, or others. I can block all ads from a page. Whenever I see a political ad, I can choose “don’t show me any more ads from XXX” and it actually works. This was a godsend during the primary and I wish was available in other platforms. I’m surprised they have this feature and have expected it to go away for years.

You can literally block an account when you see an ad on twitter and never see anything from them. If you do it enough you stop seeing almost any ads from anyone in my experience.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#108

Post by braythwayt »

harimau777 wrote: post #99
nradov wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you propose to fix that? Should candidates only be allowed to make "true" statements?

This wouldn't completely fix the problem, but I think it would help to not allow candidates to make factually false statements. That is to say: there may not be a way to objectively say whether a given statement is true, but it is possible to objectively say that some statements are false.

In other words, “science.”

Science is the study of falsifiable theory. Things that cannot be falsified lie outside of science.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#109

Post by macspoofing »

It's a good feature from an individual perspective. It's not a good feature if you don't like cultural bubbles forming. Democrats will block Republican ads, Republicans will block Democrat ads - will that lead to a better world when Republicans can't reach Democrat voters or vice versa?

I find this focus (attack?) on political advertising on social media platforms by traditional media companies to be self-serving and hypocritical. The craziest political ads have been run on local TV and newspapers for decades [1] and everyone just accepted it as part of a normal political discourse ... but now there is a concentrated effort to prevent or "fact check" political ads on Facebook and Twitter. Why? I'm sure it has nothing to do with billions spent on political ads (revenue that will go to traditional media outlets if it can't be spent on social media), nor anything to do with the pro-Democratic party bias in almost all traditional media.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcjEe9guEIA

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#110

Post by swarnie_ »

coding_lobster wrote: post #105
prepend wrote: post #95

Facebook has a really interesting feature that I haven’t seen in Twitter, Google, or others. I can block all ads from a page. Whenever I see a political ad, I can choose “don’t show me any more ads from XXX” and it actually works. This was a godsend during the primary and I wish was available in other platforms. I’m surprised they have this feature and have expected it to go away for years.

Doesn't such a feature contribute to the creation of echo chambers? It's hard to tell when it comes to something like ads as they usually aren't a great source of information.

I don't really want my political views enforced or challenged on Facebook, its really not the place for it.

Why should i have to when all i want is a C rate messenger service?

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