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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.
Or just a button for 'this is fake news' or some such. Once say 10 people click that they stop it spreading. Bit like the flagging system on HN.
I 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…
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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.
There are no absolutes. If you're willing to accept some false-positives, nearly everything can be categorized as a "lie".
This is how and why Stephen Colbert coined the term "truthiness".
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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.
> And then you see the complaints (including on HN) about how Facebook is biased. They can block lies and disinformation unilaterally, it shouldn't just apply to one political party or the other. "Don't let XXX News lie to you, I Just won the election!" This kind of nonsense shouldn't be tolerated either way. Personally... I think the whole model of "Viral" content is just absolutely broken. The kind of content it en…
But it's the crux of the problem.
If you're a relatively low-information voter, how else are you supposed to know who won besides the politicians themselves or the media?
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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…
The idea that the POTUS just called racists who ran over and killed a woman "fine people" is beyond reason.
A person with some objectivity can understand that Trump wasn't talking about white supremacists with his "fine people" statement. He was referring to there being "fine people on both sides" of the political spectrum, protesters and counter-protesters, at the protest. His point was that not all of those protesting the statue removal were white supremacists, some were "fine people". Of course, that's the story the left went with anyway, because Trump fumbled another one.
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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.
Like the "undecided voters" who thought Biden won the debate, but some of whom were interviewed by msnbc months ago and said they were voting got Biden.
Or the fact they classify antifa and blm as peaceful protest groups, not hate groups.
It's likely people don't particularly care about the truth. Narratives matter more.
By default, each user (including news outlets) should have an area of influence analogous to a square kilometer of travel. This means that any post or share is only ever seen by a dozen people or so.
Now, the hard part comes in how you design an algorithm that reinforces community building behavior. Essentially, every troll in the world should start shadow-banned with no way to work their way to a larger audience without years of community building comments (kindness, engagement, supportive, etc.).
This would also mean that FB would have to enforce geotagging of comments, so that operatives in other countries couldn’t be a large part of the hidden political discussion in another country.
This is ironic. The west blames China for censorship while today they support their own. China truly has vision banning facebook from.the beginning
China could not survive 10 years with a platform with open dialogue, that is why their corrupt leadership fears these systems.
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.
Mainstream media outlets like the NYTimes or the Washington Post have become too one-sided (I think that if Trump were to say a common-sense thing like "the Earth is round" they'd certainly find something to argue about, like "it's not actually round, round! it's an ellipsoid! Trump is lying!"), at this point applying your (in other contexts) perfectly reasonable suggestion will only alienate half of the electorate.
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.