Facebook to let users turn off political adverts • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#161

Post by cwhiz » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 1:18 PM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #109

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…

You can target Facebook ads with surgical precision to manipulate people exactly the way you want. This is exactly what Cambridge Analytica did.

You cannot target people with such precision in traditional advertising.

I don’t think it’s unfair to say social media advertising and data collection is the biggest risk to democracy that we have ever faced.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#162

Post by SkyBelow » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 1:18 PM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #49

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #41

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 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.

Can that be done? The issue with politics is that the end result in enforce, often metaphorically but sometimes literally, at gunpoint. The real world implications are something that cannot be ignored, unlike a discussion of favorites teams or tv shows. Even coding standards discussions always have the realization that you can do what you want regardless of the standard and the worst case scenarios involve no longer contributing to a project or finding a different employer. Not always the nicest outcomes but still a world's away from being on the losing side of a political debate that makes it into law.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#163

Post by ori_b » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 1:19 PM UTC

This misses the point hard. The problem is people who don't realize they're being lied to.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#164

Post by chii » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 1:20 PM UTC

wffurr wrote: post #157

blueatlas wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are saying this as if those ads state facts and stick to the issues. Politics in the US is a mess. Party politics makes absolutely no sense to me. My trust in what they have to say, particularly on social media, is nil. Those ads will be turned off. I have never have, nor never will, vote along party lines. I am, proudly, unaffiliated.

If you want to be effective and create change, you need to engage with party politics and push one (or both?) parties in a particular direction. Voting in party primaries and advocating for change within parties, given the state of affairs in US politics, is a better bet for effective change than maintaining a stance of moral purity.

This is absolutely the right stance to take. Nothing will change if you don't do it, and choosing to ignore politics is not going to lead to better politics. You'd just leave the bad actors all the room to act!

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#165

Post by danShumway » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 1:20 PM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #109

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…

I am mildly skeptical that disabling advertising will have the effect you worry about.

Anecdotally, I am more likely to be charitable and curious about someone else's views if I'm not surrounded by a lot of appeals to emotion or party loyalty. Watching Republican/Democrat ads doesn't make me more sympathetic to either party, often it's the opposite. Get rid of all of the ads comparing Nancy Pelosi to the devil, and I'll be more likely to engage with the actual issues being discussed. Modern political advertising seems specifically designed to push me into more tribal attitudes.

I won't comment on banning things, but blocking political ads on a personal level may be healthy for at least some people. It's not exactly hard to find political arguments if you search for them. And if you do search for them, you're more likely to engage with people who actually know what they're talking about, instead of conspiracy theorists on Facebook.

It's the same attitude of, 'if you want to learn Javascript, there are better ways you can spend your time than reading random rants online about the death of the web.' If you want to learn conservatism/liberalism/socialism, there are better sources than a Facebook ad.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#166

Post by newacct583 » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 1:20 PM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #109

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…

> 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?

The article doesn't say they'll allow partisan choice about what to block. Just that they'll give you a bubble disallowing "political" ads. I think the big quibble is how they define "political", but the scenario you're imagining doesn't exist.

And FWIW: maybe all those ads in the Atlantic video you posted are "crazy". Very few of them (none that I saw) are lies. It's routine for a median Facebook user to be faced with screenfulls of misinformation. Zuckerberg was challenged about this directly, and stated that it wasn't his job to act as a gatekeeper.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#167

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 1:22 PM UTC

raxxorrax wrote: post #113

toyg wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are not born “ignorantly arguing”, they get radicalized by repeated exposure to extreme viewpoints. This switch could help reduce that phenomenon a bit. But I agree that it should be opt-in, rather than opt-out, and I say that as an extremely politically-aware individual. Politics is important but it doesn’t work well on Facebook and should be discouraged there.

> they get radicalized by repeated exposure to extreme viewpoints I don't think this holds up to any scrutiny to be honest. There are certainly some cases where people are easily influenced, but I don't think it is that significant. Only from a worldview that puts you way above others. Aside from the problem of defining extremism, people do make choices. I think what many people observe about conduct on social media…

[deleted]

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#168

Post by elicash » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 1:23 PM UTC

I'm a political advertiser as part of my job and one thing most people don't get is that it's not just ELECTORAL ads that Facebook usually is referring to when they're talking about "political" ads. It's, as mentioned in the article, a shorthand for "Ads About Social Issues, Elections or Politics."

So, a few points. First, the obvious, that these things all depend on the extent to which Facebook promotes this "feature." So with that said:

1. I planned a big vote-by-mail (political orgs are concerned about in-person voting bc of COVID) ad campaign to members of my organization. Obviously, it wasn't just Facebook and Instagram, but these will be flagged as politics and less effective than they were previously. Facebook will do its own encouragement to register and to vote, but we know our membership better than Facebook and were crafting campaigns meant to motivate them based on research of what we know works, combined with in-person organizing that's coordinated in a way Facebook would never do. This will also hurt recruitment for members who want to knock on doors.

2. They define social issues as "sensitive topics that are heavily debated, may influence the outcome of an election or result in/relate to existing or proposed legislation." That's an "or" joining those, so it's an incredibly broad category. Expect more to be swept up in this than people in this thread are talking about.

3. The category is so broad that it's going to include most union ad activity. Not just organizing new workers, but let's say a union wants to advertise to its membership of nurses about how they can advocate for N95 masks in the workplace with their employer. It's not actually about public policy, yet Facebook generally will reject this type of ad if it's not categorized as "political." Facebook and Google both have anti-union ad practices, but this is unintentionally going to make it worse.

I'm not necessarily against these policies. Something can be bad in some ways and offset by the good. But if Facebook wants to make the argument about giving users the freedom, let me just ask, how informed are users going to be about what they're blocking? Do they know they might be blocking organizations they are dues-paying members of? Are they allowed to make a distinction between electoral ads and ads that are simply about "debated" topics?

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#169

Post by macspoofing » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 1:24 PM UTC

cwhiz wrote: post #161

macspoofing wrote: post #109

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…

You can target Facebook ads with surgical precision to manipulate people exactly the way you want. This is exactly what Cambridge Analytica did. You cannot target people with such precision in traditional advertising. I don’t think it’s unfair to say social media advertising and data collection is the biggest risk to democracy that we have ever faced.

>This is exactly what Cambridge Analytica did

The impact of Cambridge Analytica is so overstated that it crosses into hyperbole. They were a bunch of clowns with minimal impact that got magnified to a status of super-villain because you could use them to club Trump over the head with. And let's not lose sight of the big picture, namely before Trump accidentally won (yes, accidentally and barely), the Trump campaign was seen (correctly) as a total disorganized disaster and one of the biggest clown-shows in modern political campaigns ... and yet they were at the same time these nefarious puppet masters using modern high-tech technology to manipulate voters and ultimately skew the election.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#170

Post by cosmodisk » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 1:26 PM UTC

lurkmurk wrote: post #125

nradov wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Ideally, the voters can vote these people out. Politicians are not hatching from eggs, they come from people and reflect them. Same people who watch blatantly biased news, later are influenced by false ads. Improve education.

I do agree that politicians are the reflection of voters. I also agree that education needs to be improved, however I'm not sure how: modern education leaves almost no space for critical thinking,which is essential when dealing with false information. There's also a huge element of ideology,which rarely,if ever,can be changed. Lastly, if done right, masses can be convinced just about anything...