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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

#411

Post by ogre_codes »

adrianmonk wrote: post #373

I'd also love a feature that lets me block non-advertising political content. A lot of people like to use Facebook as a political soapbox. That's not what I want out of it. I want to stay connected to people, hear updates, socialize, etc. Some people push it so far that the solution of unfriending them is easy. But not everybody is so egregious that I want the nuclear option. (For example, relatives who are vocal abo…

> I'd also love a feature that lets me block non-advertising political content.

I would just prefer an option where I only saw content my friends actually took the time to post themselves. I don't want politics, memes, or other trendy bullshit, just their words, pictures, or even links they personally took the time to clip and paste. If I want news or entertainment, I can find that myself, but Facebook is currently the single best place for me to connect to a bunch of my friends and I'd love to see that without all the other bullshit.

Of course that's not what makes FB money so it'll never happen, which is why I just stopped using it entirely. (Well that plus the fact that it's run by a bunch of sociopaths)

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#412

Post by ogre_codes »

mmanfrin wrote: post #394
adrianmonk wrote: post #373

I'd also love a feature that lets me block non-advertising political content. A lot of people like to use Facebook as a political soapbox. That's not what I want out of it. I want to stay connected to people, hear updates, socialize, etc. Some people push it so far that the solution of unfriending them is easy. But not everybody is so egregious that I want the nuclear option. (For example, relatives who are vocal abo…

What is political content? Is news about the protests political? Is a statement by the president? Is a new law going in to effect political? Is someone commenting about wearing masks political? > Text classification is a thing, and there are many other techniques, so it seems possible to recognize political content with some reasonable level of accuracy and show me a lot less of that. I think you severely underestima…

> I think you severely underestimate what constitutes classifying something as political.

You are over-thinking this. Just filtering obvious political stuff would be a massive help:

- Mentions of politicians

- Key words: Liberal, Conservative, Right-wing, etc etc

- Material re-shared from political parties/ candidates/ movements.

Just that would be a giant help. Allowing users to set their own filters would be a massive help.

None of this makes Facebook money though so it won't happen.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#413

Post by minikites »

at_a_remove wrote: post #359
minikites wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So you think a kid calling an adult a "doo doo head" is the same as an adult verbally abusing a kid? Power matters more than any other factor.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#414

Post by 6510 »

You know what we need. A data driven approach to election programs. The primary goal should be to inform the voter how completely clueless they are about the options. One should know how shameful this is. An insult to democracy. There are lots of candidates to chose from and they all have their own program. Howabout you take some time out of your day to vaguely familiarize yourself with the menu before ordering? The second goal should be to further encourage the voter to stop screaming, sit themselves down and make an at least some what less uninformed decision. It's not as boring as it sounds. Some are truly colorful creatures.

https://ballotpedia.org/List_of_registered_2020_presidential...

Look at the un-notable candidates. Don't be afraid! I started by looking into Christine Weston Chandler and was not disappointed.

Note:

Last time the green party had 100-250 views on the youtube videos. This is a reasonably well known party. Everyone less noted had considerably less. Some had so few facebook followers as to not account for friends or relatives. To me it means no one in the entire world bothered to look at anything on the list. People say they don't want to be informed by their facebook friends but secretly they don't want to be informed at all. You know who you are! Numbers don't lie!

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#415

Post by at_a_remove »

minikites wrote: post #413
at_a_remove wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So you think a kid calling an adult a "doo doo head" is the same as an adult verbally abusing a kid? Power matters more than any other factor.

This is less about speech, then, or someone being called subhuman, as was your example, but more about who gets to say what to whom.

That always seems to be the agenda behind these things.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#416

Post by AnimalMuppet »

throwawaygh wrote: post #172
cwhiz wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Echo chambers always existed, but now the gain is higher. Your comment reaches more people faster on Twitter, or Reddit, or Facebook than it would face-to-face.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#417

Post by thrwawy0601858 »

lisper wrote: post #271
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 "Democratic" not "Democrat". Democratic ads. Democratic voters. Democratic party. "Democrat" is a noun. It is used by Republicans as an adjective with the intent to be belittling and pejorative. It's like calling a black man "boy". Don't do it.

No; it's used by Republicans to deprive Democrats of their unearned rhetorical monopoly on 'Democracy' and their consciously manipulative party branding.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#418

Post by 8ytecoder »

ogre_codes wrote: post #412
mmanfrin wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is political content? Is news about the protests political? Is a statement by the president? Is a new law going in to effect political? Is someone commenting about wearing masks political? > Text classification is a thing, and there are many other techniques, so it seems possible to recognize political content with some reasonable level of accuracy and show me a lot less of that. I think you severely underestima…

> I think you severely underestimate what constitutes classifying something as political. You are over-thinking this. Just filtering obvious political stuff would be a massive help: - Mentions of politicians - Key words: Liberal, Conservative, Right-wing, etc etc - Material re-shared from political parties/ candidates/ movements. Just that would be a giant help. Allowing users to set their own filters would be a mass…

Pretty much everything is politics these days. That's the unfortunate truth. We can't even distinguish personal and non-personal that easily any more. Even filtering by status updates and photos won't help. Status updates can be political speech (may or may not call out someone by name or ideology), photos could be your friend holding a placard or a meme. Things as simple as wearing/not-wearing a mask is political now. In an alternate world, that would be classified under health. At least for me, that's upsetting that we are debating this. And it doesn't end there - how many of us have felt a tinge of jealousy when a friend posts that beautiful picture of a barn in the middle of Montana while you're slugging away on your computer? That's not healthy either. I have come to peace that I'll text my friends directly and that's it. Once a month or so I log on to facebook and comment on personal updates. Instagram & Reddit is what I can't quit yet. Sometimes I do need that mind numbing feed scrolling time. Otherwise, I actually call/text and talk to friends and family. Granted who I call family and friends is very limited.

TBC, these are my personal opinions and how you view and use social media could be different. It's clearly not for me anymore.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#419

Post by thrwawy0601858 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #289
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…

> Republicans will block Democrat ads - will that lead to a better world when Republicans can't reach Democrat voters or vice versa? The piece indicates that there will be an option off political ads entirely, not to block political ads by partisan affiliation. (The latter is both more complex to even superficially inplement and would be rather ineffective because SuperPAC ads are formally unaffiliated with either pa…

> The ones who persist after correction are doing it intentionally and tactically, though.

And there's absolutely nothing wrong with depriving Democrats of their consciously manipulative branding and their unearned rhetorical monopoly on 'Democracy'.

To suggest otherwise speaks volumes about one's desire to control language, and a rather anti-Democratic disposition.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#420

Post by thrwawy0601858 »

rlt wrote: post #399
dragonwriter wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Republicans will block Democrat ads - will that lead to a better world when Republicans can't reach Democrat voters or vice versa? The piece indicates that there will be an option off political ads entirely, not to block political ads by partisan affiliation. (The latter is both more complex to even superficially inplement and would be rather ineffective because SuperPAC ads are formally unaffiliated with either pa…

> Yes, but Republicans consistently use the term 'Democrat' instead of 'Democratic' because they don't want to imply that Democrats have a connection to the concept of Democracy If true that's petty, but on the other hand, is the Democratic party actually any more "democratic" than the Republican party? (current president's authoritarian tendencies notwithstanding)

They aren't, and the people suggesting this (i.e. the people defending their party branding in this very thread) are lying to you.
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