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Facebook widens ban on political ads as alarm rises over election

nytimes.com

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Re: Facebook widens ban on political ads as alarm rises over election

#61

Post by nl »

dragonwriter wrote: post #49
vkou wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About half the country believes that Fox is legitimate media. Given that legitimacy is exclusively a product of belief, they qualify as a 'legitimate media' source.

> About half the country believes that Fox is legitimate media. > Given that legitimacy is exclusively a product of belief, they qualify as a 'legitimate media' source. If we accept the first part as fact and apply the standard implied by the second, then Fox is in a hazy gray area of equally legitimate and not-legitimate, rather than clearly legitimate. Which seems (ignoring the people who haven't heard of it or hav…

> If we accept the first part as fact and apply the standard implied by the second, then Fox is in a hazy gray area of equally legitimate and not-legitimate, rather than clearly legitimate.

This is almost exactly mirrored on the other side of politics. See https://www.journalism.org/2020/01/24/u-s-media-polarization...

Re: Facebook widens ban on political ads as alarm rises over election

#62

Post by marcell »

srtjstjsj wrote: post #59
marcell wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ban advertisements on Facebook, you end up favoring people with pre-existing set of followers. Typically this will be an incumbent, or perhaps celebrity candidates. Moreover, FB banning political ads doesn't end the advantage of having more money. It just channels that money somewhere else (TV ads, hiring door-to-door campaigners).

How can you say that banning FB ads similtaneous muzzles free speech (in your other comment) and also has no quantitative impact on speech?

It certainly muzzles speech. It is likely to lessen the advantage of money in politics, but does not eliminate it entirely.

I don’t believe eliminating the influence of money from politics is a desirable or achievable goal. If you do think it is desirable and achievable, then a ban on FB ads makes sense, but you should also presumably advocate for a ban on TV ads, newspaper ads, paid campaign events, paid campaign staff, and so on.

Re: Facebook widens ban on political ads as alarm rises over election

#63

Post by marcell »

Zak wrote: post #43
marcell wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether or not FB has this commitment right now, they should have this commitment. A ban on political ads would go against a hypothetical commitment to the principle of free speech.

Every large advertising platform I can think of has rules about what they will accept that are narrower than what the laws that apply to them require. For example, it's generally legal in the US to advertise firearms, but most large advertising platforms refuse ads for them.

Again, I’m describing a goal. You are describing the status quo. The existence of a bad status quo doesn’t negate what the goal should be.

In my view, the goal of FB should be to allow for free speech, especially in the context of politics.

Re: Facebook widens ban on political ads as alarm rises over election

#64

Post by dragonwriter »

nl wrote: post #61
dragonwriter wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> About half the country believes that Fox is legitimate media. > Given that legitimacy is exclusively a product of belief, they qualify as a 'legitimate media' source. If we accept the first part as fact and apply the standard implied by the second, then Fox is in a hazy gray area of equally legitimate and not-legitimate, rather than clearly legitimate. Which seems (ignoring the people who haven't heard of it or hav…

> If we accept the first part as fact and apply the standard implied by the second, then Fox is in a hazy gray area of equally legitimate and not-legitimate, rather than clearly legitimate. This is almost exactly mirrored on the other side of politics. See https://www.journalism.org/2020/01/24/u-s-media-polarization...

> This is almost exactly mirrored on the other side of politics.

No, it's not, if you actually pay attention to the details of the study. Fox is the only source in the study in that weird middle ground, all four of the other top 5 sources Republicans rely on are on the same list for Democrats, and 3 of the other top 5 Republicans trust are on the comparable list for Democrats, and all the ones on either Democratic list that aren't on the corresponding Republican list (as well as, more obviously, those that are on the corresponding Republican lists) are significantly positive in net trust, while Fox is in that weird middle and Hannity on radio (the other one on the Republican trust list) is far in net negative territory. There are differences on the opposite sides of the spectrum, but not the kind of symmetry implied by “mirrored”.

Re: Facebook widens ban on political ads as alarm rises over election

#65

Post by Zak »

marcell wrote: post #63
Zak wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every large advertising platform I can think of has rules about what they will accept that are narrower than what the laws that apply to them require. For example, it's generally legal in the US to advertise firearms, but most large advertising platforms refuse ads for them.

Again, I’m describing a goal. You are describing the status quo. The existence of a bad status quo doesn’t negate what the goal should be. In my view, the goal of FB should be to allow for free speech, especially in the context of politics.

If Facebook was a simple publishing platform the way it was in its early days, I'd be inclined to agree. The same goes for an ad network with only broad targeting capabilities, e.g. that the viewer is likely an adult in a particular candidate's district.

Restricting political advertising using Facebook's hyper-targeted advertising platform strikes me as a responsible decision. I'm not sure there is a bright line between persuasion and manipulation, but if Facebook is trying to prevent the latter, that's more ethical behavior than I expected from them.

Re: Facebook widens ban on political ads as alarm rises over election

#66

Post by Zak »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #47
bmarquez wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social networks could just disable the Share or Retweet button and I think the problem will solve itself. I miss the old Facebook circa 2007 -- no likes and no shares made it a better experience for me.

Agreed. Facebook and Twitter really ought to have thought about the long history of chain emails, and realized what they were doing when they added an "all my friends have gotta see this!" button.

They knew exactly what they were building.

Re: Facebook widens ban on political ads as alarm rises over election

#68

Post by marcell »

Zak wrote: post #65
marcell wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, I’m describing a goal. You are describing the status quo. The existence of a bad status quo doesn’t negate what the goal should be. In my view, the goal of FB should be to allow for free speech, especially in the context of politics.

If Facebook was a simple publishing platform the way it was in its early days, I'd be inclined to agree. The same goes for an ad network with only broad targeting capabilities, e.g. that the viewer is likely an adult in a particular candidate's district. Restricting political advertising using Facebook's hyper-targeted advertising platform strikes me as a responsible decision. I'm not sure there is a bright line betw…

Note that limiting hyper targeting is very different from banning all political ads, as GP was suggesting, and as Twitter has done (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/technology/twitter-politi...). Even then, I don't think it's a good approach. I'd observe that you can do hyper targeting via snail mail, door-to-door campaigning, phone calls, and SMS. Also, this is still a type of policy that assumes people need to be shielded from speech, and that they aren't able to make good decisions without guidance from FB moderators.

Personally, I think disclosure is the best policy. For example, make it easy to find all the ads a particular politician or group has posted. FB has already implemented a many things in that area.

Re: Facebook widens ban on political ads as alarm rises over election

#69

Post by brnt »

erichocean wrote: post #56
kyrra wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My take on all of this... Lots of states are pushing for larger scale vote-by-mail than has ever happened before. Some states have been doing this for a long time (Oregon, Colorado), but they have the processes in place to handle elections. Other states are trying to do it in a few months with no real prep ahead of time. We're already seeing this lead to ballot printing problems, ex:[0]. To build on that, many of the…

> It's going to be messy. My point is: that's by design, so that Trump can be removed from office no matter what.

He has said a few times now that he (pretends to) suspect that ballots counted after election day will be increasingly fraudulous and that therefore the earliest estimates are regarded by him as most accurate. Thereby stacking the cards of chaos in his favour, which has been his motif all along of course.

Can't really see how he'll be removed over this seeing he's preparing for and even fuelling this chaos.

Re: Facebook widens ban on political ads as alarm rises over election

#70

Post by exdsq »

amiga wrote: post #60
jariel wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vetting it would be hard. Most of it is opinion, slander etc. not so much factual. Even the quasi factual content can be spun any which way while remaining within the confines of 'technically correct'.

At what point does freedom of speech qualify the post?

Freedom of speech isn’t a right when it comes to a company deciding what can be posted on their site, right? So they could just have a policy where if they don’t know they don’t let it grow viral. Hell, even a limit of 5000 unique views on all posts probably won’t affect many people until the election is over.
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