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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

#71

Post by skocznymroczny »

vkou wrote: post #45
erichocean wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Fox News presents any particular difficulty to running the Color Revolution playbook in the US. They're so obviously biased that decent people can (and do) ignore them. What matters is boots on the ground (aka protests) and whatever the legitimate media promotes to the public. That gives politicians (in both parties) the necessary cover to remove Trump from office by force.

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.

The other half believes that Trump called neonazis and white supremacists very fine people and told people to drink bleach to fight coronavirus. Let's not pretend only one side is biased and uses misinformation for its purposes.

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

#72

Post by baby »

torben-friis wrote: post #36
ogre_codes wrote: post #18

This 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.

You make an interesting point: what would a social network of limited range look like? Something where you couldn't have more than a set number of connections, things didn't spread more than two nodes in the graph, and resharing wasn't an option. I think it would be ideal to fill in the mainstream need for facebook ( keeping in touch with people)

I’ve been thinking of something like that. One person has what? Perhaps 100 people tops that they want to keep track of in their lives? Make it less, and now you are forcing someone to actively manage who they want to keep close with. On top of that prevent re-sharing or sharing of links and pictures and you have a more personal experience. No public profiles.

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

#73

Post by chillwaves »

skocznymroczny wrote: post #71
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.

The other half believes that Trump called neonazis and white supremacists very fine people and told people to drink bleach to fight coronavirus. Let's not pretend only one side is biased and uses misinformation for its purposes.

Coronavirus: Outcry after Trump suggests injecting disinfectant as treatment

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52407177

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

#74

Post by inglor_cz »

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.

I do not think they were oblivious.

The ultimate goal of such systems is to gain hours and hours of your attention daily. What works better than outrage?

Not even cute kittens.

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

#75

Post by danjac »

kyrra wrote: post #42
hnaccy wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. There's been one camp consistently attacking the legitimacy of the election and it's not Biden's.

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 never ceases to amaze how one of the world's oldest and proudest democracies is absolutely useless at the basic table-stakes competency of a democracy, running a free and fair election.

I guess Americans just love their broken legacy system too much...

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

#76

Post by duncan_bayne »

You know, there's only one thing that bothers me more than political organisers spreading fear and misinformation through social networks.

And that's social networks becoming "Ministries of Truth", deciding for themselves what information is fit to be shared with the masses, and what must be suppressed.

I mean, all the evidence we've seen over the years suggests that Facebook is in no way, shape, or form trustworthy.

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

#78

Post by chrisco255 »

ogre_codes wrote: post #30
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's false. First of all, if there's actually a fire it's fine. Second of all, if the speaker was under the actual belief there was a fire even if there wasn't actually a fire, it's fine. Only if the person yelling fire intended to cause panic would there be a case against the person. And proving this would be difficult in a court of law.

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

#79

Post by pjc50 »

bmarquez wrote: post #44
torben-friis wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make an interesting point: what would a social network of limited range look like? Something where you couldn't have more than a set number of connections, things didn't spread more than two nodes in the graph, and resharing wasn't an option. I think it would be ideal to fill in the mainstream need for facebook ( keeping in touch with people)

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.

I'm old enough to remember "manual retweet", and people still do it on Instagram which has no re-share functionality.

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

#80

Post by hnracer »

srtjstjsj wrote: post #57
hnracer wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with vetting is that it's unlikely to be done in an unbiased way. Facebook is a Silicon Valley company with a young staff that leans significantly to the left. As a right-leaning individual this makes me uncomfortable because I know that staff aren't going to separate their politics from decision making surrounding vetting/choosing who gets to do the vetting. Here's a concrete example: Facebook staff, bei…

I'm curious what you consider the "hoax" in "very fine people hoax". Do you disagree with this analysis (linked below) which claims that the "only very fine non-white-nationalist people" Trump were either (a) at a different activity from the one Trump claimed they were doing, or (b) people who weren't there but Trump thought were there. That analysis puts Trump at best misinformed or confused, if not supportive of th…

Because about ten seconds later in the same speech he says he unequivocally condemns white supremacists. But the media (and the democrats in their advertising) cuts off that part of the speech, leaving a false impression in people's minds. This alone is evidence that he wasn't calling white supremacists fine people.

Further, it was a large protest over a statue with thousands of people over a whole day, do you think there isn't one single non white supremact there protesting to keep it up? There's no evidence that Trump was referring to the tiki torch rally when he said fine people. He made the speech after the large protest and the terrorist attack, where by the law of large numbers there is inevitably going to be non-white supremacists attending to show support merely for the statue/history.

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