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All political ads running on Google in the US

adstransparency.google.com

311–320 of 354 posts

Re: All political ads running on Google in the US

#311
post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It takes more than one country to go to war. So you agree that Russia could stop the war at any time, and didn't need to start it in the first place?

Any primary party could stop it at any time. Russia can stop it tomorrow. Ukraine can stop it tomorrow. Nobody involved "needed" to start it. I do think that Russia saw itself facing an existential threat.

That would be an interesting and defendable argument. It’s not the argument you made though.

You started off by pinning the blame on the US alone

Re: All political ads running on Google in the US

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it's a testament to my daily driver (Brave browser) that I had to Google "what is temu."

Genuinely curious: do you actually include "what is" in your searches, or was that paraphrasing?

I would, this would hint google's classifier that I want a tl;dr and not temu's website.

Re: All political ads running on Google in the US

#313
post #277

I'm still amazed these stock images with highlighted text don't send off immediate red flags in everyone's mind that they're being tricked. Especially ones that have children, veterans, or old people, usually with big frowns or drooping flags. "Don't disappoint this stock image! Vote no on prop blah-blah" It works. This strategy actually works

> It works. This strategy actually works It works because, in any context, people are easily persuaded that something that they want to believe is true. Willingly or not, people are often looking for excuses to believe something, not evidence to help determine whether it is true. (Of course, you and I are included in this; believing oneself immune to propaganda is just a way of being more vulnerable to the kind of pr…

Sure but if I see a mailer or an ad in that format, it's a red flag.

The only way this would work as a propaganda tactic on me is if they reversed that, if say, the "yes on 3" campaign sent out a glossy mailer with a frowning minority wheelchair bound veteran that said "save our seniors. Vote no on 3".

If that subterfuge happened, then I fell for it

Re: All political ads running on Google in the US

#314

According to the site, ad targeting is allowed based on gender and age, but not race or religion, for example. All four of those categories were previously used to restrict voting and are now legally protected from voting discrimination. Why allow targeting some of them but not all? Either all should be disallowed (for the same reason that race, religion, etc are), or all should be allowed (on the reasoning that this…

Showing untargeted ads to children might be worse than showing them targeted ads.

Re: All political ads running on Google in the US

#315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my view, money might once have, but the number of persuadable voters is quite low. If someone has decided to vote for Trump, it's unlikely they will change their mind. And if someone is undecided, they'll probably vote for Trump, because let's face it, most people voting for Harris aren't voting because they like her platform - they're voting because they dislike Trump. If you don't dislike Trump, Harris's platfor…

> most people voting for Harris aren't voting because they like her platform - they're voting because they dislike Trump That seems to be a popular conclusion by people who are on the Trump side. I see little evidence for it in real life. Many factors go into a political choice, and sure, disliking Trump is one of them, but most Harris supporters would not be voting R in any case because they do not agree with that p…

Well, I don't like her and her platform is alright compared to trump's, but that just words. Tim Walz is alright tho. I still voted for her. My sample size is definetly biased and small, but that is the sentiment I get from her voters that I know.

Re: All political ads running on Google in the US

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been attempts but when corporations are considered people limitations on their "speech" all eventually fail

I hate this phrasing. Corporations aren't people. The finding was that people dont lose their rights when working together via a corporation. If you can buy a political sign and your friend can buy a sign, then the two of you can buy a sign together.

The issue is then the theoretical contract of the two of you together takes no real repercussion for breaking the law, whereas separately if you committed crimes independently then you could be put in jail. We don’t have capital punishment for corporations, and we should.

Re: All political ads running on Google in the US

#317
post #67

Political advertising just makes democracy look like a total joke. If you can buy votes by shoving ads in peoples’ faces that’s not a democracy, that’s an oligarchy.

Germany doesn't have negative ads criticizing opponents (at least it didn't have them when I lived there). This makes them refreshingly boring. I would guess at least 90% of the US ads are basically "the other guy is bad. Be afraid" without much content. Getting rid of the negative ads would help a lot.

Every since election cycle started I've been bombarded by two kinds of text messages (local election):

- Don't vote for that guy he is a pedo

- Don't listen to this, he isn't a pedo, and also endorsed by local police department

Re: All political ads running on Google in the US

#318
post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It works. This strategy actually works It works because, in any context, people are easily persuaded that something that they want to believe is true. Willingly or not, people are often looking for excuses to believe something, not evidence to help determine whether it is true. (Of course, you and I are included in this; believing oneself immune to propaganda is just a way of being more vulnerable to the kind of pr…

Sure but if I see a mailer or an ad in that format, it's a red flag. The only way this would work as a propaganda tactic on me is if they reversed that, if say, the "yes on 3" campaign sent out a glossy mailer with a frowning minority wheelchair bound veteran that said "save our seniors. Vote no on 3". If that subterfuge happened, then I fell for it

Since dark money no longer has to be registered, no only would the "Yes on 3" team send out a "No on 3" flyer, it would have a wrong explanation of what 3 is, and give really bad reasons for voting no, so even if you did read it, you'd still vote yes (a no vote will raise taxes on seniors and veterans and give the money to corporations) and hope voters don't check outside sources.

Re: All political ads running on Google in the US

#319

In Norway it's forbidden with political ads on TV . Reasoning being that live images can have a huge influence, while also possibly being inflammatory and dumb down the debate. But main reason mainly is that it would give those with enough money to afford these "expensive tv ads" a leg up. However, this law hasn't been updated in decades. So it's still only TV ads that's illegal. So it feels like a quite arbitrary re…

The real reason of course is that the political establishment wanted to protect themselves from competition. They can control printed media within the country, but had no control over broadcast television, which could be beamed from a satellite. Due to the restrictions on press freedom in Scandinavia, commercial TV stations used to be based in the UK. A parliament member in Sweden even suggested a ban on satellite dishes at the time, when the first non-government TV channels started broadcasting.

> But main reason mainly is that it would give those with enough money to afford these "expensive tv ads" a leg up.

This is not the case. Electoral authorities could oblige all broadcasters to give every candidate a certain number of minutes of broadcast time. That's how they do it in other countries. To hilarious effect sometimes.

Re: All political ads running on Google in the US

#320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but if I see a mailer or an ad in that format, it's a red flag. The only way this would work as a propaganda tactic on me is if they reversed that, if say, the "yes on 3" campaign sent out a glossy mailer with a frowning minority wheelchair bound veteran that said "save our seniors. Vote no on 3". If that subterfuge happened, then I fell for it

Since dark money no longer has to be registered, no only would the "Yes on 3" team send out a "No on 3" flyer, it would have a wrong explanation of what 3 is, and give really bad reasons for voting no, so even if you did read it, you'd still vote yes (a no vote will raise taxes on seniors and veterans and give the money to corporations) and hope voters don't check outside sources.

In the kind of advertisement I'm talking about there is no correlation between the imagery and the policy. You'll have a stock photo of a worried immigrant mother holding a child and the proposition will be about something like rezoning a light industrial area for mixed use.

My universal response is "some bastard is trying to hustle me with stock photos"

I wrote about this 8 years ago https://kristopolous.medium.com/the-voters-are-dumbfucks-her...

I think my thoughts are basically the same today

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