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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

#351

Post by catalogia »

crazygringo wrote: post #301

This may sound positive (less ads, less disinformation) at first glance, but I think it's actually a terrible and dangerous development. Zuck has seen that he's going to get hate no matter what his political content moderation policy is, so he thinks he can escape that by literally escaping from it: letting users just turn it off. But while he has the legal right to, in the larger societal sense it's dangerously and…

It is not the duty of democratic citizens to subject themselves to advertisements. It is possible, and indeed preferable, to engage in bidirectional political discourse with other humans. e.g. Actually talk to people and have conversations.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#352

Post by minikites »

at_a_remove wrote: post #343
minikites wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The ability to close yourself off in a bubble where you can't be reached by opposing viewpoints is relinquishing your duties as a democratic citizen. This is only true if each side has a valid and reasonable difference of opinion. This is not true for hate speech and other propaganda. For example, it's not an "opposing viewpoint" to say that people with dark skin are subhuman. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propagand…

Would you apply this "hate speech" label to Yakub and such such ideas? I need to know how seriously to take you.

How much political power does the Nation of Islam have? How many members of congress identify as members of the Nation of Islam?

Wikipedia says they have 20,000–50,000 members total. You're not making a meaningful or valid comparison by comparing the beliefs of <50,000 people to the the incredible power of structured prejudice in the USA.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#353

Post by talentedcoin »

komali2 wrote: post #291
talentedcoin wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, OP points out that maybe a commitment of one night every few years isn’t so unreasonable, and your response is to berate them for their privilege? What alternative do you suggest?

Mail in voting and thousands of in person voting booths across the state. Berate is a strong word to describe what I read imo. I think it was more a suggestion to put one's self in another's shoes. If you believe for example that a caucus is not too high a burden of voting for anyone in America because credit card debt exists, I personally guarantee to you that this is due either to a lack of experience in the strugg…

OK, sorry, maybe I was confused -- we're talking caucuses weren't we? I definitely agree with that for voting at large, but I always thought the whole point of a caucus was the messy political "fun" of it all. (Disclaimer, I am not American.)

Anyways thanks for the reply, I am familiar with that book and these arguments. I just don't understand why they should apply to a caucus, which is once every few years, and mostly for more politically-involved folks by definition already.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#354

Post by ori_b »

bhupy wrote: post #347
ori_b wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact that Facebook appears to be running their platform with this principle is in no way inconsistent with the statement "They actively want their users to be free to consume what they want, even if others think that’s bad for them." What the hell are you talking about, "running it consistently with this principle?" Facebook is very much a platform that restricts free speech. They even restrict political speech…

> Facebook is very much a platform that restricts free speech. I made my case for why this is not the case. 1. We agree that pornography restriction is a violation of free expression. Because there are other alternatives, I feel less bad about their restriction of it. Because there are no other alternatives to an open public square of ideas (such as Facebook), I feel stronger about it. It would obviously be ideal if…

> They absolutely do not do this. Please provide evidence of this. God knows my entire feed is filled with political speech by friends and family, so if you're right about this, I may have the cudgel I need!

Repeat some of the messages that Trump cross posted to both Twitter and Facebook. Facebook will take them down for violating community standards.

Do they remove all political speech? No. Do they enforce their restrictions unless you're a political figure? Yes.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#355

Post by komali2 »

talentedcoin wrote: post #353
komali2 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mail in voting and thousands of in person voting booths across the state. Berate is a strong word to describe what I read imo. I think it was more a suggestion to put one's self in another's shoes. If you believe for example that a caucus is not too high a burden of voting for anyone in America because credit card debt exists, I personally guarantee to you that this is due either to a lack of experience in the strugg…

OK, sorry, maybe I was confused -- we're talking caucuses weren't we? I definitely agree with that for voting at large, but I always thought the whole point of a caucus was the messy political "fun" of it all. (Disclaimer, I am not American.) Anyways thanks for the reply, I am familiar with that book and these arguments. I just don't understand why they should apply to a caucus, which is once every few years, and mos…

If it were up to me, every American would have the time and financial stability (as well as the accessibility resources necessary) to participate in a caucus.

Until we can achieve that kind of safety net, though, I think it's important that ALL forms of engaging with democracy are available to ALL Americans. The political parties get away with far too much shenanigans imo.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#356

Post by MajorBee »

fbelzile wrote: post #141
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.

I actually took this a step further and un-followed all of my friends. It took me more than a few hundred clicks, but Facebook now shows me a completely empty news feed. There's no ads either, although I'm not sure if that's because of uBlock Origin or if it's because there's not enough posts to stick ads in-between. As soon as there's another service I can use as a modern Rolodex, I'll be using that instead. I think…

At that point, why not just use (Facebook) Messenger and stop using the main website altogether? Messenger gives you the benefit of a Rolodex without subjecting you to the normal feed. Facebook did a pretty good job of cleaning up bloat from Messenger recently too.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#357

Post by mgbmtl »

crazygringo wrote: post #333
mgbmtl wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ads give more power to those with more money. It's not a leveled playing field, at least in the US. Many countries limit spending on adverts (or campaigns in general) for this reason.

I'm not making any claims about how level the playing field is, or whether there ought to be limits to political ad spending in order to create a more balanced conversation. I'm arguing that being able to choose to eliminate political advertising entirely is antidemocratic. That's not balance -- it's deeply unbalanced.

Yet advertising isn't necessarily speech, and nothing says it should be part of democracy.

For example: https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/supreme-court-refuses-to-hear-ap...

Billboards advocated that they had the right to free speech. A provincial court agreed that they were visual pollution and subject to restrictions. The judgment was upheld.

Advertisers abused their privileges and people are fighting back.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#358

Post by dorkwood »

crazygringo wrote: post #337
dorkwood wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To test the strength of this argument, I'm imagining a world in which ads have invaded our homes even further, and can now be found on the refrigerator door, the bathroom mirror, and the bedroom ceiling. Would you consider switching off political ads in those places to be relinquishing your duties as a democratic citizen?

That's not the argument I made. A healthy democracy needs to have places for democratic discussion. Not all places need to be for it -- that would be terrible. But some places. Today, those places are mainly TV news/commentary, newspaper/magazine reporting and analysis, and Facebook+Twitter. Each of them have different strengths and weaknesses. Eliminating any of them for political speech would be a huge loss. To exp…

Oh, I see. I'm not actually a Facebook user, so I didn't consider it to be a place for political discussion. I suppose that's the source of our differences.

Edit: Just to clarify, I used it many years ago, but it was really just for sharing photos with family and friends.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#359

Post by at_a_remove »

minikites wrote: post #352
at_a_remove wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you apply this "hate speech" label to Yakub and such such ideas? I need to know how seriously to take you.

How much political power does the Nation of Islam have? How many members of congress identify as members of the Nation of Islam? Wikipedia says they have 20,000–50,000 members total. You're not making a meaningful or valid comparison by comparing the beliefs of <50,000 people to the the incredible power of structured prejudice in the USA.

Ah, so your hate speech label is one of those "depends on whom it is against" thing. Yeah. That's why I never take that kind of thing seriously.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#360

Post by johnpaulkiser »

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.

Democracy is inherently broken if you think people can be controlled in this way.
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