I just wish they would get out of politics altogether.
Facebook widens ban on political ads as alarm rises over election
21–30 of 270 posts
Re: Facebook widens ban on political ads as alarm rises over election
#22This just seems like too little, too late. Much of the problems I see aren't advertising in the traditional sense, but viral content from sketchy sources. If they wanted to seriously affect this, they would prevent posts from spreading to tens of thousands/ millions of people without being vetted.
> viral content from sketchy sources.
Many of those sources are seeded with promoted links, though. It's true that a lot of conspiracy nonsense is genuinely organic, but a LOT of it is not.
Re: Facebook widens ban on political ads as alarm rises over election
#23This just seems like too little, too late. Much of the problems I see aren't advertising in the traditional sense, but viral content from sketchy sources. If they wanted to seriously affect this, they would prevent posts from spreading to tens of thousands/ millions of people without being vetted.
A lot of the "viral" content is started with a paid ad though.
Re: Facebook widens ban on political ads as alarm rises over election
#24This just seems like too little, too late. Much of the problems I see aren't advertising in the traditional sense, but viral content from sketchy sources. If they wanted to seriously affect this, they would prevent posts from spreading to tens of thousands/ millions of people without being vetted.
A simple way would be to stop all content from propagating beyond few thousand people before a human vetting it.
Re: Facebook widens ban on political ads as alarm rises over election
#25This just seems like too little, too late. Much of the problems I see aren't advertising in the traditional sense, but viral content from sketchy sources. If they wanted to seriously affect this, they would prevent posts from spreading to tens of thousands/ millions of people without being vetted.
I'm sure they'd like to, but the line between "vetting" and "endorsing" is extremely challenging to draw, and it's not good for anyone if Facebook bans spreading information that they don't as a company endorse.
Re: Facebook widens ban on political ads as alarm rises over election
#26> Political ads will be banned indefinitely after polls close on Nov. 3... Of course.
(googler, opinion is my own). Google did the same thing: https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/25/21456323/google-election-... As there is a good chance we won't know the result of this elect on election night (or possibly within the first week), the tech companies seem to be getting in-front of a potential problem to keep campaigns from drumming up any kind of fear about the election results after the polls are closed.
> there is a good chance we won't know the result of this elect on election night (or possibly within the first week)
That's by design.[0]
The goal is to have the media and protests decide who wins the election if Trump appears to win on Nov 3rd, using the same playbook currently being run in Belarus as we speak (and that was run successfully in 2014 in Ukraine).
Why? It works: we can't have another 4 years of Donald Trump. If it looks like he might win, we can attack the legitimacy of the vote and install Biden instead.
Of course, if Biden wins in a landslide on Nov 3rd (which seems increasingly likely), then the legitimate media will announce him as the winner immediately, and none of this will be necessary. Better safe than sorry though…
> keep campaigns from drumming up any kind of fear about the election results
The goal is to keep Trump from doing this, while legitimate media promotes Biden unopposed (regardless of the vote totals). I also will not be surprised if Trump is suspended from Twitter immediately after the election, and any "this election was rigged!" content from Trump's people on YouTube to also be banned.
Re: Facebook widens ban on political ads as alarm rises over election
#27I would love if Facebook could simply remove all political ads. The problem then becomes what classifies as political ad. This can be very obvious (vote for president = political, buy cereal = not political), but it can also be far less obvious.
For example, would an ad for in support of an oil pipeline be considered a political ad? What if it's in support for an outcome of a referendum? Or an Ad for a charity? What if that charity is the EFF/ACLU in support of changing policies?
It's an extremely difficult problem to differentiate what is considered a political ad and what is not and I don't exactly trust Facebook to do so.
Re: Facebook widens ban on political ads as alarm rises over election
#28This just seems like too little, too late. Much of the problems I see aren't advertising in the traditional sense, but viral content from sketchy sources. If they wanted to seriously affect this, they would prevent posts from spreading to tens of thousands/ millions of people without being vetted.
A lot of the "viral" content is started with a paid ad though.
A fair amount of misinformation and outright lies comes directly from the mouths of Trump (or other politicians) themselves.
Re: Facebook widens ban on political ads as alarm rises over election
#29This just seems like too little, too late. Much of the problems I see aren't advertising in the traditional sense, but viral content from sketchy sources. If they wanted to seriously affect this, they would prevent posts from spreading to tens of thousands/ millions of people without being vetted.
This is very true.
> If they wanted to seriously affect this, they would prevent posts from spreading to tens of thousands/ millions of people without being vetted.
And then you see the complaints (including on HN) about how Facebook is biased.
I do note that they have recently banned all QAnon groups and posts, so that's a start.
Re: Facebook widens ban on political ads as alarm rises over election
#30This just seems like too little, too late. Much of the problems I see aren't advertising in the traditional sense, but viral content from sketchy sources. If they wanted to seriously affect this, they would prevent posts from spreading to tens of thousands/ millions of people without being vetted.
I'm sure they'd like to, but the line between "vetting" and "endorsing" is extremely challenging to draw, and it's not good for anyone if Facebook bans spreading information that they don't as a company endorse.
Information or Lies?
Even Free speech protections in the constitution doesn't protect the right to yell fire in a theater.