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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

#171

Post by netcan »

There's some interesting shifting going re: social media & politics.

Twitter made their decision about political ads. I guess it was a hard call... revenue potential. Meanwhile, Twitter is coming under more pressure and scrutiny. Politicians, moguls and such use it. If they feel twitter is being unfair (or just unfavourable) to them.... Trump isn't Pewdiepie.

Youtube has been generally backing away from "hot" content. Covid & Floyd George were very visible examples. Searches and recommendations directed people to official and TV content, not "youtubers."

Alphabet just don't want some random video on covid, police protests or whatnot going viral... not unless the channel is NBC's or something. The risk-reward is terrible. I'm guessing that "politics" generally will follow this route on youtube. They just want to be light entertainment. They want out of the heat.

Facebook though... FB have an overwhelming interest in politics. Politics is going to be a big revenue source. It's also an important content source. The moral hazards here are insane. Zuch makes Murdoch look quaint. The small details of these policies are media equivalents of gerrymandering, and they'll have a lot of influence on politics in the coming years.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#172

Post by throwawaygh »

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.

The targeted precision really is what's different. Your candidate can be N different single-issue candidates in a way that's just not possible without precise targeting.

The "echo chambers" explanation, in particular, seems wrong. Echo chambers always existed.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#174

Post by foldr »

pjc50 wrote: post #103
foldr wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 discu…

As you mention yourself, anti-Semitic racism is a serious problem in Poland. And other forms of racism are still a problem, even if the number of non-white people is small.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#175

Post by bhupy »

ori_b wrote: post #163

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

I think FB (and Zuck) have made it pretty clear by now that they actively want their users to be free to consume what they want, even if others think that’s bad for them. They understand what they’re doing.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#176

Post by tenebrisalietum »

jjice wrote: post #154
tenebrisalietum wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> classify user generated content as political or not is non-trivial. There's probably a set of 50 or so keyword combinations, plus the names of current and former politicians and common misspellings, that would cover 90% of cases.

If that's the route we want to take, I think a browser extension would work just fine. Loop over all divs that represent tweets, if contains any key words, delete div. Rise and repeat with other websites. I wonder if a general black list exists for various websites already.

Won't work on iPhones.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#177

Post by foldr »

raxxorrax wrote: post #129
foldr wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

BLM has organizations directly tied to US democrats. People giving money might not have realized this. BLM has no monopoly on fighting racism. EAs claims to be interested in fighting racism is an insult to many people. I think a lot of members of BLM are racists.

>BLM has organizations directly tied to US democrats

Most large political organizations in the US have "ties" of some kind or another to one or both of the major political parties. But BLM isn't a single monolithic organization.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#179

Post by Hitton »

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…

>It's not a good feature if you don't like cultural bubbles forming.

I agree with that, but I don't think that advertising will meaningfully impact that. From what I gather political advertising isn't used to change opinions of opposition, it's precisely targeted. It's used to help sway undecided and make your own vote base actually register for voting and vote. People from groups with differing opinions already haven't been seeing the advertisement.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#180

Post by kleer001 »

amelius wrote: post #93
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.

Facebook is the least of our worries. We need a system where running a successful political campaign does not depend on how much money you bring. Each candidate should have the same budget and so equal amount of exposure.

True. And sadly the most basic solutions rarely get air time anywhere.

Just as I rarely see petitions for "equal and free advertising for all candidates" I rarely see "hold authorities accountable for their actions". Sure there's related arguments among the clammer, but never hear it stated that simply.

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