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Weaponizing Ads: How Google and Facebook Ads Are Used to Wage Propaganda Wars

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Re: Weaponizing Ads: How Google and Facebook Ads Are Used to Wage Propaganda Wars

#71

Post by jpadkins »

conover wrote: post #65
jpadkins wrote: post #55

> Google did not pro-actively vet the truth of Israeli government claims It is really scary that people are pushing for Google and Meta to be the arbiter of truth. I don't think people realize what they are asking for. Western civilizations have a tradition of liberal free speech, and allowing the courts to sort out the specifics of what speech causes harm to what parties (libel, etc). There are already laws on the b…

The government (and/or society?) have already deputized private organizations to enforce various types of controls either implicitly or explicitly. Banks (AML) and Payment Processors (recent Steam content removal news) come to mind. Irrespective of whether it's a good or bad things, it already exists.

The Banks don't determine if you are a terrorist or what not. They comply with the order when a judge gives them a lawful order to freeze accounts. I think it's okay to deputize corporations for the execution of the law in the digital world. You really, really don't want the federal government or mega corps to determine what is the "truth" vs. "propaganda". It's way too much power in society to be centralized. The decision on these nuanced issues needs to have due process and be de-centralized.

Re: Weaponizing Ads: How Google and Facebook Ads Are Used to Wage Propaganda Wars

#72

Post by gchamonlive »

gruez wrote: post #66
gchamonlive wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a stawman designed to misdirect the discussion. How about we keep discussing regulation in the context of ad abuse? A valid criticism would be an implied false dichotomy in my original comment (either regulation or rampant corporate abuse). My idea is for us to discuss this. Is regulation not the right way? What's the alternative? Not, "oh if that doesn't work for all possible universe of applicable solutions…

>This is a stawman designed to misdirect the discussion. How about we keep discussing regulation in the context of ad abuse? I can't see how my comment is a "strawman" in any meaningful sense. >A valid criticism would be an implied false dichotomy in my original comment That's exactly my point. Adopting a "you're either with us or against us" attitude is totally toxic, and shouldn't be accepted just because it's for…

So, what's the the right form of regulation to address this? Are you against regulation? Or are you here just to discuss aesthetics?

Re: Weaponizing Ads: How Google and Facebook Ads Are Used to Wage Propaganda Wars

#73

Post by buellerbueller »

gruez wrote: post #37
gchamonlive wrote: post #15

At this point, whoever opposes big tech regulation is in favor of these kinds of abuses happening. Here in Brazil there is a big discussion around this regulation but for other reasons, like the social media algorithms pushing child abuse content to potential pedophiles. The criticism against these regulations are all valid and need to be discussed, because we also don't want to create these mechanisms at the governm…

Can you imagine this logic being applied to any other topic? >At this point, whoever opposes [CSAM scanning/encryption backdoors] is in favor of [child abuse/criminal activity] ...

The discussion, however, is about this topic, which is meaningfully different due to the sheer scale of the abuses occurring. Entire populations are being subjected to propagandistic brainwashing. That scale is not happening in your example.

Re: Weaponizing Ads: How Google and Facebook Ads Are Used to Wage Propaganda Wars

#74

Post by mediumsmart »

Everyone here including the author and me have been raised on propaganda and the mantra of the true alcoholic - this time its going to be different

Regulating the corporations or their shadow, the government is both fine I guess and with that out of the way: lets discuss this!

Re: Weaponizing Ads: How Google and Facebook Ads Are Used to Wage Propaganda Wars

#75

Post by talkingtab »

Ads are propaganda. Propaganda is Ads. Ads = propaganda. Propaganda is a tool to persuade people. Are ads an attempt to persuade people?

So is it news that people are using ads/propaganda to persuade people? No. Will Google, Facebook, Amazon or Apple do anything that will harm their revenue as propaganda platform? No.

Do Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple use propaganda? Yes.

This is like reading an article about how weapons from weapon companies are being weaponized.

Re: Weaponizing Ads: How Google and Facebook Ads Are Used to Wage Propaganda Wars

#76

Post by dghlsakjg »

conover wrote: post #65
jpadkins wrote: post #55

> Google did not pro-actively vet the truth of Israeli government claims It is really scary that people are pushing for Google and Meta to be the arbiter of truth. I don't think people realize what they are asking for. Western civilizations have a tradition of liberal free speech, and allowing the courts to sort out the specifics of what speech causes harm to what parties (libel, etc). There are already laws on the b…

The government (and/or society?) have already deputized private organizations to enforce various types of controls either implicitly or explicitly. Banks (AML) and Payment Processors (recent Steam content removal news) come to mind. Irrespective of whether it's a good or bad things, it already exists.

Just because something already exists doesn't mean that we want more of it.

Re: Weaponizing Ads: How Google and Facebook Ads Are Used to Wage Propaganda Wars

#77

Post by some_random »

jpadkins wrote: post #71
conover wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government (and/or society?) have already deputized private organizations to enforce various types of controls either implicitly or explicitly. Banks (AML) and Payment Processors (recent Steam content removal news) come to mind. Irrespective of whether it's a good or bad things, it already exists.

The Banks don't determine if you are a terrorist or what not. They comply with the order when a judge gives them a lawful order to freeze accounts. I think it's okay to deputize corporations for the execution of the law in the digital world. You really, really don't want the federal government or mega corps to determine what is the "truth" vs. "propaganda". It's way too much power in society to be centralized. The de…

It's not just lawful court orders, over the years many explicit and implicit "suggestions" about "risk" have been issued to banks to discourage activity deemed undesirable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point

Re: Weaponizing Ads: How Google and Facebook Ads Are Used to Wage Propaganda Wars

#78

Post by xalava »

jpadkins wrote: post #71
conover wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government (and/or society?) have already deputized private organizations to enforce various types of controls either implicitly or explicitly. Banks (AML) and Payment Processors (recent Steam content removal news) come to mind. Irrespective of whether it's a good or bad things, it already exists.

The Banks don't determine if you are a terrorist or what not. They comply with the order when a judge gives them a lawful order to freeze accounts. I think it's okay to deputize corporations for the execution of the law in the digital world. You really, really don't want the federal government or mega corps to determine what is the "truth" vs. "propaganda". It's way too much power in society to be centralized. The de…

That is not how AML-CFT work. Banks calculate your level of risk. When in doubt, they will cut you off or block individual transactions, unless the benefits outweigh the risks.

Re: Weaponizing Ads: How Google and Facebook Ads Are Used to Wage Propaganda Wars

#79

Post by layer8 »

everdrive wrote: post #4

This makes me wonder why people put up with targeted content whatsoever. I actually have a friend who works in game development, and he has a real chip on his should regarding the current attitude that the discoverable customer base has. For instance, he sees a lot of people who think developers are pushing things down people's throats, are making games bad or annoying on purpose just so that users get frustrated, et…

> My personal theory is that people broadly are becoming very thick skinned with regard to content being pushed on them

You mean thin-skinned?

Re: Weaponizing Ads: How Google and Facebook Ads Are Used to Wage Propaganda Wars

#80

Post by snapcaster »

philipallstar wrote: post #63
_Algernon_ wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stealing a physical thing = the previous owner can't use it. Copying a thing or accessing a platform = the previous owner can still use or sell it. Even if you consider it unethical access, the comparison to stealing really misses the mark.

> the comparison to stealing really misses the mark I know this always triggers a hard-coded response based on regex, but the comparison doesn't rely on the specifics of stealing, so it's not a valid criticism. The logic is: people offer things in exchange for a price. You can take the things in exchange for the price, or you can leave the things. You shouldn't take the things without paying the price.

Why? I truly believe I have no moral obligation to any of these entities and I see them as amoral organizations _at best_ who can't possibly reciprocate
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