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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

#141

Post by Closi »

itsoktocry wrote: post #90
tim333 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. We are now in year 5, the second election cycle, and you think the solution is as easy as adding a flagging system?

It would be a start, I kept finding videos of how to make ‘Covid killing’ hand sanitizer on YouTube with incorrect dilution and there was no option to flag it as spreading dangerously false information in the review process.

The questions were just “is it hateful?” And “is it illegal” with no option for “demonstrably false and offering dangerous advice”.

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

#142

Post by throw9872349872 »

GavinMcG wrote: post #115
bbrree66 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the real question :) Of course it will be by some far left leaning person. Zuckerberg said they have content moderation and consult with many many groups and the interviewer asked for ONE example of a conservative group they consult with, he had no answer.

Not intended to derail this, but could someone point to/recommend conservative groups who a) have denounced white supremacy, and b) are reasonably data- or analytically-driven?

Trump literally denounced white supremacy multiple times throughout the past 4 years.

Perhaps you can point me to liberal groups who have a) denounced pedophilia and b) are reasonably science-driven?

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

#143

Post by notahacker »

itsoktocry wrote: post #95
srtjstjsj wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I'm curious what you consider the "hoax" in "very fine people hoax". 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-…

Trump started the interview by questioning the notion of the alt-right before pivoting to argue that the 'alt-left' started the violence and falsely claiming the counterprotestors didn't have permits, before adding his endorsement of the Robert E Lee statue cause. He pointedly hasn't taken a similar tack of emphasising the involvement of fine people as well as bad people with other protests involving some degree of violence, such as BLM. That's the context a person someone with some objectivity is putting it in, and it's difficult to argue with a straight face that there is no degree of truth to the media reporting it as Trump endorsing the march.

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

#144

Post by save_ferris »

netcan wrote: post #139

Honestly, I've been quite shocked over the last 5 years or so at Zuck's take on political and politically adjacent politics. I get that they're of the "money at any cost" ethic, but a lot of decisions (or lack thereof) have been downright imprudent. These last minute decisions are likely reactive to something, whether or not it's actually reactive to the debate comment that this writer thinks triggered it. My (uneduc…

> In any case, the creepiness of fb just keeps rising. Maybe they'll end up exploding the whole thing.

Somehow, I doubt it. They’ve established themselves as a major tech stock, largely through the “money at all costs” ethic you describe above, they have billions of users that derive significant amounts of self-worth from the platform, and a world-class marketing arm to keep reminding us how much good they’re doing for the world.

Barring some major fraud scandal, I don’t think the market would be interested in moving away from them at all.

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

#145

Post by throwaway738h »

GavinMcG wrote: post #115
bbrree66 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the real question :) Of course it will be by some far left leaning person. Zuckerberg said they have content moderation and consult with many many groups and the interviewer asked for ONE example of a conservative group they consult with, he had no answer.

Not intended to derail this, but could someone point to/recommend conservative groups who a) have denounced white supremacy, and b) are reasonably data- or analytically-driven?

Here's the president, leader of the conservative party, in his own words denouncing white supremacy, as covered a year ago by CBS https://youtu.be/DUdRS98R6B8

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

#146

Post by dsugarman »

schwinn140 wrote: post #136

Simple solutions: * Block all political ads all the time. * Require all political parties, and their PACS, to register as a known Advertiser account within the system. Any time an ad runs, and regardless of the source, the associated party will be heavily penalized with a removal of their non-paid content. There needs to be ramifications for their abuse of the platform. Being that Facebook can't charge them a fine, p…

Can they not charge them a fine? Can't they put something in their terms that requires a monetary penalty as well as a "time-out"?

I love your solutions but I also worry that facebook wouldn't want to put them in place because of all the lost revenue, if you make the abuser pay for the lost revenue then all incentives seem aligned

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

#147

Post by NortySpock »

netcan wrote: post #139

Honestly, I've been quite shocked over the last 5 years or so at Zuck's take on political and politically adjacent politics. I get that they're of the "money at any cost" ethic, but a lot of decisions (or lack thereof) have been downright imprudent. These last minute decisions are likely reactive to something, whether or not it's actually reactive to the debate comment that this writer thinks triggered it. My (uneduc…

"These last minute decisions are likely reactive to something"

The House "Facebook and others have monopoly power, are abusing it, and should be split up" report, perhaps.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/10/house-amazon-fac...

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

#148

Post by phjesusthatguy3 »

cm2187 wrote: post #100
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.

Vetted by who? Based on the political opinions of some manager somewhere in California?

Yes. Private company, private rules. I will be the hypocrite back to make the argument you're making now when they come for me (which they won't because I'm not on facebook).

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

#149

Post by smileysteve »

BestCatalonia wrote: post #67

This is ironic. The west blames China for censorship while today they support their own. China truly has vision banning facebook from.the beginning

It's only censorship if the government does it. If Facebook runs editorial on any of it's content, it simply follows the same process private (and/or) foreign media companies have done since 1776.

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

#150

Post by tekkk »

tim333 wrote: post #88
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.

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.

Button is way too simplistic. A form where you could state your proof along with other arguments why a news is untruthful or otherwise overly antagonizing would work better, but would be hard to evaluate by automatic means.

Maybe after a certain threshold have been reached and the complaints vetted by a human, you could start removing the news or even blocking the news site from being shared on Facebook. Most likely the system would be gamed to attempt to block major sites like CNN, but would work well for smaller, dubious sites that have no real other purpose than creating provoking news.

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