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Facebook widens ban on political ads as alarm rises over election

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

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would also expect somebody to not march alongside neo-marxists and self-professed communists (antifa) with a history of violent extremism (according to the FBI director Wray) but there you go. > Support for the Lee statue has never been seriously about history This is irrelevant to the question of whether there were non-white supremacists in attendance. What matters as to people's motives is whether people think th…

Then your conclusion should be that there were no fine people on either side, not that there were. If you truly believe that leftism is as evil as racial genocide then actually stand by that. If ignorance leads you to provide ammunition for people who support racial genocide and you don’t leave once you notice the nazi flags flying at a march you attend... I really don’t know what to say.

I do believe that support for antifa (the violent political extremist group according to the FBI director) and support for communism (prevalent among self-described antifa) is as evil as support for fascism, yes. I am more concerned about communism actually because it has a veneer of respectability that makes it potentially more dangerous than fascism in the current climate, although I do believe that they're both evil. I am not talking about the Orwellian double speak that equates antifa the extremist group, with anti-fascism.

It's not my conclusion that there are no fine people on either side, I was simply outlining the absurdity of thinking that there were only fine people on one side, given the visible existence of political extremist groups on both sides that many protesters (on both sides) overlooked when they attended the protests in order to voice their political opinion about what should happen with the statue.

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

#182
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is so simple. News should only come from approved sources. Once the veracity has been checked by a Facebook employee, it is then empirically true or false. I don't know why people in the 21st century cannot understand that all statements are true or false, and that we can place authority for determining truth with companies with known, trusted political allegiances. For example, I have read a lot about health…

Sarcasm lacking a “/s” sarcasm tag is risky. On deeply divided issues, where both sides demonize the other and is willing to think the worst of anyone at a drop of a hat, unmarked sarcasm is in effect asking to be knocked down.

Your assumption is that I care about some random person on the internet thinking "the worst". The point is to highlight that people on here actually have this attitude, and it isn't sarcasm. How many politicians are saying Facebook should be censoring other people (unsurprisingly: always their opponents)? How many people say social media is the problem? How many people say the "other side's" news is fake news and ignore the fake news they believe in? It isn't possible to have an actual opinion (I have offered them on here, and that gets downvoted too).

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

#183

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…

Only if they wanted a fair balance, I think Facebook is just aiming to under advertise Conservatives. There is no secret that about 95% of all donations from Silicon Valley goes to Democrats. It won't take too long until the whole world is a mirror of California.

It's not quite 95% all around, here are the top ones with the percentage of all their employees' contributions to the Democrat party:

    Netflix           = 98%
    Nvidia            = 93%
    Adobe             = 93%
    IBM               = 90%
    Salesforce        = 89%
    Google            = 88%
    Microsoft         = 85%
    Apple             = 84%
    Paypal            = 84%
    Cisco             = 80%
    Amazon            = 77%
    Facebook          = 77%
    Intel             = 68%
    Broadcom          = 68%
    Oracle            = 67%
    Texas Instruments = 60%
    Qualcomm          = 50%
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/02/most-liberal-tech-companies-...

Still pretty bad, and makes one worry about where those employees are donating their non-political and non-tracked donations to.

Edit. Added source.

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

#184
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you automatically presume any conservative group is white supremacists by default?

No, but I can't bring to mind any that have denounced white supremacy. Which is why I'm asking.

Does this work for you? https://streamable.com/sr9o2s

Edit: People on this forum need to stop being so cultish. Downvoting this doesn’t change the reality that it directly kills your narrative.

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

#185

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.

I'm bothered that there seems to be a vocal subset on HN who say that freedom of speech doesn't apply to these platforms.

It doesn't matter what anyone says on here, free speech doesn't apply to private platforms. If it did then they'd be full of spam.

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

#186
post #138

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…

The same way the pandemic opened up the opportunity for remote work, I'd love to see Facebook _experiment_ with maybe 6 months of no political ads and see what emerges in its place.

I'd love to have the world experiment with no Facebook for 6 months and see what emerges in its place.

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

#187

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.

> Much of the problems I see aren't advertising in the traditional sense, but viral content from sketchy sources. Define a credible source? We know for a fact all the major news outlets edit photos, often don’t use their own reporters, write sensational articles (actively stretching facts). No, I don’t think we can say what is a “sketchy” source. Unless we start wanting Facebook to moderate truth (or just accept the…

> No, I don’t think we can say what is a “sketchy” source.

Yes we can.

If someone lies to me, they are a sketchy source. If someone gets caught spreading misinformation—lies repeatedly, they are a sketchy source. Or are we going to start trying to suggest we don't know what lying is now too?

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

#188

It's good to see Facebook finally taking a firm stand against fake news and hate speech. All this hateful fake news makes me (pronouns he/him) feel unsafe about the future. The other day, my Fitbit indicated to me that my heartbeat was abnormally high; I was panicking and hyperventilating... Thankfully Alexa automatically ordered me a puffer from Amazon and I was able to calm myself down. That's how unsafe all this f…

Assuming this is satire, how does it add to the discussion?

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

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but I can't bring to mind any that have denounced white supremacy. Which is why I'm asking.

Does this work for you? https://streamable.com/sr9o2s Edit: People on this forum need to stop being so cultish. Downvoting this doesn’t change the reality that it directly kills your narrative.

Nope. Trump is an incoherent bullshit generator. He says conflicting things such that his intended audience will take away what they want to hear, but can defend himself having said the exact opposite. The only way to judge him is to look at his results.

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

#190

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…

Completely banning political ads puts incumbents at a huge advantage. Emerging challengers don't have nearly as much free organic distribution, so they need to buy ads to build momentum and expand their reach.

Even in the current US presidential election, Biden has 3.2 million Facebook followers while Trump 31.7mm on his personal page and 6.3mm on his presidential page.

Without paying for ads that extend your audience beyond your pre-existing followers, the incumbents will always have more reach for their messages.

Completely agree that we should be able to see the people responsible for running each of these ads though, with personal liability for the content that they're sharing.

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