Facebook finally hands over leave campaign Brexit ads • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook finally hands over leave campaign Brexit ads

#141

Post by tomp » Thu, Jul 26, 2018, 9:18 PM UTC

lostlogin wrote: post #27

to_bpr wrote: post #16

It's disappointing, but not surprising, that the focus seems to be entirely on the "wrong" side of the "desired" outcome. At this point it amounts to fighting very hard to find any reason to undo a democratically determined result.

Democratic yes, but ludicrous. Setting up something as critical as that to have such a slim majority decide is illogical. The U.K. doesn’t seem to get referendums. Important note however - they didn’t have a referendum to join the EU but maybe that’s covered by the one on joining the European Communities?

> Setting up something as critical as that to have such a slim majority decide is illogical

So you'd rather have a slim minority decide?

Re: Facebook finally hands over leave campaign Brexit ads

#142

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Jul 26, 2018, 9:20 PM UTC

lostlogin wrote: post #36

dane-pgp wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If just 1% of the population of the UK changed their voting intention (from Remain to Leave) because of illegally bought or misleading advertising, then undoing that effect would mean that Remain would have won. Invoking the "democratically determined result" is begging the question, since we don't really know whether the result would have been the same if the Leave campaign hadn't broken the rules: https://www.thegu…

I think the overriding point is that a simple majority is completely the wrong format for descisions like this. I’d have suggested a two thirds majority requires for change. There is also the argument about them stifling debate. There is an intersting criticism of the format in the below link from Chris Patten “I think referendums are awful. The late and great Julian Critchley used to say that, not very surprisingly,…

> I think referendums are awful. The late and great Julian Critchley used to say that, not very surprisingly, they were the favourite form of plebiscitary democracy of Mussolini and Hitler.

Referenda are the only mechanism of plebiscitary democracy (which is democracy by plebiscite, which is a synonym for referendum), so calling them someone's favorite form of plebiscitary democracy is vacuous and tautology true.

But neither Hitler nor Mussolini is particularly known as a supporter of democracy, whether plebiscitary or otherwise, so aside from the nullity of the literal reading, the clearly intended implication is false.

Re: Facebook finally hands over leave campaign Brexit ads

#143

Post by makomk » Thu, Jul 26, 2018, 9:24 PM UTC

oblio wrote: post #69

rayiner wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is "xenophobic" about those three images? Turkey is currently undergoing a very public internal war between western secularism and Islamic fundamentalism. Why would a western country want to enter into democratic union with such a country at this stage? Not every judgment regarding other countries is "xenophobic." Imagine if Alabama or Mississippi were trying to join the U.S. today. Would it be "xenophobic" of C…

If it's not xenophobic, it's at least hypocrisy: * the UK was one of the biggest proponents for Eastern EU expansion * the UK did not impose any restriction on labor from the new EU members, which every EU member could do, up to 10 years from the date of the new members joining * then, surprise-surprise!, when a lot of Poles, especially, moved to the major English speaking country in the EU, the UK decided all of a s…

The UK government was also one of the biggest proponents for the UK remaining in the EU, so it's... not exactly surprising that the Leave campaign didn't align with the government position

Re: Facebook finally hands over leave campaign Brexit ads

#144

Post by jsonne » Thu, Jul 26, 2018, 9:25 PM UTC

untog wrote: post #121

jsonne wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I'm saying that whether or not you "broke the law" isn't a very interesting argument to me because some truly horrific things are legal and some perfectly mundane ones aren't. Simply being a law isn't a compelling argument in my mind as to whether something is right or wrong. At the same time you can undermine the spirit of something while being perfectly legal. The original argument was about people attempting t…

But no-one is discussing whether it is right or wrong. The original question was "what about Obama's statement?" in the context of the legal investigations against the Leave campaign. The "what about" answer is "there is no criminal investigation because nothing illegal happened". I get what you're saying but it doesn't really have any relevance here. If you're disregarding legality then any questions about why a cri…

>But no-one is discussing whether it is right or wrong.

I mean we literally are. The original premise is about invalidating democratic results. If no one cares if it's right or wrong the conversation is moot in the first place because leave won regardless of circumstance.

>I get what you're saying but it doesn't really have any relevance here.

It actually does. Again the original premise was about mitigating factors of a democratic vote. That is almost entirely a moral/ethical issue. Regardless good laws should follow morals and not the other way around so they're totally inseperable in my mind.

Re: Facebook finally hands over leave campaign Brexit ads

#145

Post by pjc50 » Thu, Jul 26, 2018, 9:25 PM UTC

tathougies wrote: post #137

derriz wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Yet, those crossing the border would have some rights to enter and work in Britain, right?” Absolutely wrong. Where did you get that idea?

I'm not an EU or UK citizen, so I don't really know, but my initial assumption seems right: http://www.aboutimmigration.co.uk/eu-citizens-working-uk.htm... > Despite the vote to exit the EU, the UK will still remain a member of the EU until Article 50 negotiations have concluded. This means most citizens of countries in the European Union (EU), the European Economic Area (EEA) and Switzerland have the right to live a…

Turkish nationals would. You started out talking about Iraqis. Simply crossing the border into Turkey does not convey rights to enter the UK.

Re: Facebook finally hands over leave campaign Brexit ads

#146

Post by growlist » Thu, Jul 26, 2018, 9:26 PM UTC

derriz wrote: post #126

growlist wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think these stories have traction in the UK? Do you think the UK has no legitimate grounds to question EU membership?

To answer your second question, of course it has. I don’t understand your first question? Those anti-EU stories were lies pure and simple - all the references are provided on the linked site. Are you in favour of the media publishing lies in order to advance a political viewpoint?

If the EU were not already loathed by some the stories would find no audience, is my belief. For example, I met a plasterer who said that immigrants were destroying his livelihood by working for peanuts. If I were him I'd probably blame the EU also. But I also think the result was seen as an opportunity to send a general two fingered FU to the establishment, both UK and EU - I don't think the coordinated FUD and Obama etc did Remain any favours whatsoever. Surely better to take the high ground and rhapsodise our fantastic future in the EU? Remain chose not to do that.

Re: Facebook finally hands over leave campaign Brexit ads

#147

Post by jonhendry18 » Thu, Jul 26, 2018, 9:27 PM UTC

fareesh wrote: post #78

These laws, though well intentioned, seem to sometimes struggle in the modern context. In this case, President Obama flew over to London in April 2016 and advocated very publicly, that Britain should remain in the EU. This act by a foreign leader was converted into headlines, videos, tweets, etc. which were shared roughly a bajillion times. President Obama is an extremely popular man. In any list of the world's most…

Except it's really easy to discount his statement if you're so inclined, because you know who it's coming from.

A lot of these Facebook ads had no information about the source.

Re: Facebook finally hands over leave campaign Brexit ads

#148

Post by jonhendry18 » Thu, Jul 26, 2018, 9:29 PM UTC

brandonmenc wrote: post #77

untog wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The leave campaigns were recently found to be in violation of election law, so no, this isn't just a "moral" issue: > the Electoral Commission found that the youth-focused campaign, BeLeave, had been joint-working with the official Vote Leave campaign — yet the pair had not jointly declared spending thereby enabling the official campaign to overspend by almost half a million pounds. And that overspend went straight t…

> It used to be that all of your advertising was public, so it was possible to see what promises are being made, what kind of terminology is being used, etc. etc. In the Facebook era you can hyper-target your ads to only show to a small subsection of people, without anyone knowing what you're saying. If say, before the 1990s, a national candidate sent out targeted mailers to some little town in flyover country, no on…

The problem here is that the targeted ad could be something from an unidentified source that is designed to make the recipient more receptive to certain messages. Xenophobic propaganda, etc.

Later the "legit" advertising could be more effective on those people.

Re: Facebook finally hands over leave campaign Brexit ads

#149

Post by pjc50 » Thu, Jul 26, 2018, 9:29 PM UTC

googlryas wrote: post #95

Xylakant wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be one of the consequences, yes. However, Turkey isn’t even remotely close to joining the EU and given the current political situation in Turkey I would not expect talks to move forward any time soon. So pretending there’s even a remote chance is disingenuous. It uses fears of foreigner not founded in reality. That’s pretty much the definition of xenophobic.

Which goes back to the original point. You don't need to be afraid of foreigners to not want them emigrating into your country en-masse(or, have the free option to should they be willing to take it). Just like you don't need to be afraid of strangers or anti-social to not want strangers to live in your house.

> You don't need to be afraid of foreigners to not want them emigrating into your country en-masse

Actually, you do - because otherwise what is your objection to them?

Compare with free movement within countries; it would be obviously prejudiced to say e.g. "I don't want Scousers moving to London", and that's not a position which anyone is going to take seriously.

Re: Facebook finally hands over leave campaign Brexit ads

#150

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 26, 2018, 9:30 PM UTC

dillondoyle wrote: post #35

maym86 wrote: post #32

Can someone please explain the argument against passing laws forcing all adverts on advertising platforms like Facebook and Google to be searchable and transparent so we can see who is purchasing them, the parameters used for targeting the advert and what they are publishing? I can't see a downside for the majority of people.

Perhaps because 1st Amendment gives right to anonymous speech: https://www.eff.org/issues/anonymity Perhaps because it gives established players a big leg up in terms of compliance costs (imagine being a small news site having to create this searchable system etc)

[deleted]