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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

#31

Post by marcell »

anigbrowl wrote: post #17
marcell wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It violates the principle of free speech (even if it does not violate the letter of the law in the first amendment). There is nothing inherently bad about paying $1000 (or $1M) for a political ad. For a mental image, someone paying for a political ad could be running for school board in a medium sized city. A ban on all political ads would restrict that person's ability to explain why they want to be on the school bo…

I don't buy that argument, which just rewards whoever has the most money to throw at the advertising market (Bloomberg's signal failure in this regard doesn't invalidate the general problem). I like the clearly labeled and non-sensationalistic statements in voter information booklets, myself. I am of course speaking in general terms about future elections rather than making drastic adjustments in the middle of this o…

If you ban advertisements on Facebook, you end up favoring people with pre-existing set of followers. Typically this will be an incumbent, or perhaps celebrity candidates.

Moreover, FB banning political ads doesn't end the advantage of having more money. It just channels that money somewhere else (TV ads, hiring door-to-door campaigners).

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

#32

Post by marcell »

Zak wrote: post #16
marcell wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It violates the principle of free speech (even if it does not violate the letter of the law in the first amendment). There is nothing inherently bad about paying $1000 (or $1M) for a political ad. For a mental image, someone paying for a political ad could be running for school board in a medium sized city. A ban on all political ads would restrict that person's ability to explain why they want to be on the school bo…

Facebook is not committed to the principle of free speech in advertising, and prohibits advertisements for a great many things that are legal to advertise.

Whether or not FB has this commitment right now, they should have this commitment. A ban on political ads would go against a hypothetical commitment to the principle of free speech.

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

#33

Post by bretpiatt »

The challenge for all of the platforms to exit "political advertising" is the same as exiting "selling likes/follows", if they don't do it directly then 3rd party operators will enter midstream and broker it connecting people with political (or other content) to a network of bot/fake/paid posting accounts who then go promote and spread the content.

By keeping advertising on the platform it actually allows better control and enforcement than pushing it to dark web markets.

The tech players don't want to be regulated like broadcast networks are so they've created this mess by lobbying against regulation. Some level of "FCC" (I use quotes as maybe it should be a different agency online) regulation as we have with broadcast ads could make this all much better.

FCC broadcast guidelines: https://www.fcc.gov/media/policy/statutes-and-rules-candidat...

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

#34

Post by ogre_codes »

nl wrote: post #29
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.

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 encourages is by nature inflammatory and often damaging.

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

#35

Post by hnaccy »

erichocean wrote: post #26
kyrra wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(googler, opinion is my own). Google did the same thing: https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/25/21456323/google-election-... As there is a good chance we won't know the result of this elect on election night (or possibly within the first week), the tech companies seem to be getting in-front of a potential problem to keep campaigns from drumming up any kind of fear about the election results after the polls are closed.

> there is a good chance we won't know the result of this elect on election night (or possibly within the first week) That's by design.[0] The goal is to have the media and protests decide who wins the election if Trump appears to win on Nov 3rd, using the same playbook currently being run in Belarus as we speak (and that was run successfully in 2014 in Ukraine). Why? It works: we can't have another 4 years of Donald…

>Why? It works: we can't have another 4 years of Donald Trump. If it looks like he might win, we can attack the legitimacy of the vote and install Biden instead.

There's been one camp consistently attacking the legitimacy of the election and it's not Biden's.

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

#36

Post by torben-friis »

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.

You make an interesting point: what would a social network of limited range look like?

Something where you couldn't have more than a set number of connections, things didn't spread more than two nodes in the graph, and resharing wasn't an option. I think it would be ideal to fill in the mainstream need for facebook ( keeping in touch with people)

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

#37

Post by nl »

erichocean wrote: post #26
kyrra wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(googler, opinion is my own). Google did the same thing: https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/25/21456323/google-election-... As there is a good chance we won't know the result of this elect on election night (or possibly within the first week), the tech companies seem to be getting in-front of a potential problem to keep campaigns from drumming up any kind of fear about the election results after the polls are closed.

> there is a good chance we won't know the result of this elect on election night (or possibly within the first week) That's by design.[0] The goal is to have the media and protests decide who wins the election if Trump appears to win on Nov 3rd, using the same playbook currently being run in Belarus as we speak (and that was run successfully in 2014 in Ukraine). Why? It works: we can't have another 4 years of Donald…

Saying "the media promotes Biden unopposed" when the most popular media source in the US (Fox) leans the opposite direction is obviously wrong and disappointing to see here.

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

#38

Post by erichocean »

nl wrote: post #37
erichocean wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is a good chance we won't know the result of this elect on election night (or possibly within the first week) That's by design.[0] The goal is to have the media and protests decide who wins the election if Trump appears to win on Nov 3rd, using the same playbook currently being run in Belarus as we speak (and that was run successfully in 2014 in Ukraine). Why? It works: we can't have another 4 years of Donald…

Saying "the media promotes Biden unopposed" when the most popular media source in the US (Fox) leans the opposite direction is obviously wrong and disappointing to see here.

I don't think Fox News presents any particular difficulty to running the Color Revolution playbook in the US. They're so obviously biased that decent people can (and do) ignore them.

What matters is boots on the ground (aka protests) and whatever the legitimate media promotes to the public. That gives politicians (in both parties) the necessary cover to remove Trump from office by force.

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

#39

Post by hnracer »

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.

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, being left-leaning, do not view the "fine people hoax" as misinformation - their echo chamber wouldn't even bring it to their attention as something that could be misinformation, even though it is.

The only solution would be for a politically balanced workforce to be making these decisions, ideally a satellite office in a purple state/city with quotas for political leaning, set up only for the purposes of vetting. If we lived in a less polarized society, this wouldn't be an issue.

Would you feel comfortable if oil and gas workers who lean 80-90 percent Republican are "vetting" the information you're seeing (or are choosing who gets to do the vetting)?

As Naval says, you have a good system if you can hand the keys over to your opposition and things don't go wrong.

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

#40

Post by erichocean »

hnaccy wrote: post #35
erichocean wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is a good chance we won't know the result of this elect on election night (or possibly within the first week) That's by design.[0] The goal is to have the media and protests decide who wins the election if Trump appears to win on Nov 3rd, using the same playbook currently being run in Belarus as we speak (and that was run successfully in 2014 in Ukraine). Why? It works: we can't have another 4 years of Donald…

>Why? It works: we can't have another 4 years of Donald Trump. If it looks like he might win, we can attack the legitimacy of the vote and install Biden instead. There's been one camp consistently attacking the legitimacy of the election and it's not Biden's.

Absolutely agree, and it's essential that it remain that way if we hope to have any success with the Color Revolution playbook in November.
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