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Twitter to ban political advertising

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Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#421

Post by proverbialbunny »

Aperocky wrote: post #269

Freedom of expression inherently includes the freedom to pay for expression. What are your expression worth if you wouldn’t be able to pay a service, cellphone/internet connection/reddit gold to express that? How is paying ads different than paying a campaigner set up a loudspeaker in the middle of a city? But then again, since twitter is a private enterprise, I fully respect their right to act on their own platform.

In 1971 the US Supreme Court ruled on this very issue, stating that if it costs more than what the average person can pay for, then paying for speaking restricts freedom of speech.

They compared the cost to mail a letter vs a commercial. At the time they stated, "$1000 is beyond the reach of the majority." which at the time was what campaign donations were limited to.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#422

Post by Rapzid »

SirensOfTitan wrote: post #102

From what I recall Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez questioned Zuckerberg, she questioned along the anecdote of: If I purchase ads on Facebook saying Republicans support the Green New Deal (but they don't), will Facebook take the ads down? I often see these clean, easily provable anecdotes from those who support some kind of suppression of speech. I worry though: often the truthfulness of real world statements are difficu…

One persons "suppression of speech" is another persons right to not publish and spread that persons bullshit.

This is why people always bring up that the "Free speech" is a concept that applies to governments(never-mind the historical origins in ancient Athens which was largely around protecting political discourse and dissent from prosecution..). Like many restrictions placed on the government it falls apart and becomes contradictory when applied to the individual.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#423

Post by jlmorton »

SirensOfTitan wrote: post #102

From what I recall Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez questioned Zuckerberg, she questioned along the anecdote of: If I purchase ads on Facebook saying Republicans support the Green New Deal (but they don't), will Facebook take the ads down? I often see these clean, easily provable anecdotes from those who support some kind of suppression of speech. I worry though: often the truthfulness of real world statements are difficu…

> I often see these clean, easily provable anecdotes from those who support some kind of suppression of speech.

I had a bit of a different take. I actually think even this simple statement is incredibly difficult to verify.

First, we have to define what the Green New Deal even is. I don't mean this to be snarky, but even that is difficult.

Then we have to define what support means. Does it mean positive comments in the press? Do we need to go lookup in Lexis-Nexis every statement the candidate has made about the Green New Deal?

Even if we limit it to actual votes, it's still problematic. Did the candidate vote for the markup in committee? Did they vote to move it to the floor? In the Senate, did they vote for cloture, but vote against it on the floor? Did they vote for the bill out of conference?

Some might recall, we spent a good portion of the 2004 campaign arguing over whether John Kerry voted for the $87 billion before he voted against it.

This stuff is extremely subjective. It's probably something like a day's work for a seasoned reporter to accurately fact check a claim like this, and even then it's open to interpretation, which is easy enough to express in a fact check, but pretty hard in a binary judgement of truth.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#424

Post by xkjkls »

product50 wrote: post #365
danso wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TV and print outlets already exercise discretion on what they allow. Are you under the impression that they do not? https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/03/business/media/cnn-trump-...

CNN rejecting Trump ads is akin to Fox rejecting Warren ads given how they are politically aligned. Facebook is trying to be neutral here and let people (and journalists who will write on such ads) decide vs. trying to come in with their own judgment. This has been happening on TV/Print ads for decades now.

It is still shocking to me that in 2019 people still view Fox News and CNN as having anywhere close a mirror level of political bias.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#425

Post by xkjkls »

product50 wrote: post #389
danso wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fox News has rejected Trump ads too: https://time.com/5445246/fox-nbc-facebook-controversial-trum... But go ahead and make this a partisan thing.

If you are under the delusion that print and TV media is duly fact checking all political ads, then you are free to believe what you want.

Given how many fewer ads they have to deal with, that is probably true.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#426

Post by exergy »

hailwren wrote: post #392
exergy wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This level of pedantry drives me up the wall. Not everything needs to be invented from first principles. Profile ads are banned, yes, because they involve teh candidates. Policy ads are banned because they again involve politics. We can start anywhere ! Let's say 'nothing from any entity that receives money from a political party'. Or 'anything mentioning election candidates'. Or 'anything with certain keywords in it…

It's not pedantry at all. Look at F1's battle with cigarette advertising for a concrete example. Certainly, explicit advertising is easy to stop, but there are many ways of advertising things surreptitiously. A great example of this is Ferrari's evolution to avoid the F1 cigarette ban. They started with the word Marlboro on the side of their car, then they moved to a barcode that resembled a pack of cigarettes, and n…

With each such iteration, the advertising punch is diluted. At this point, it's a stretch to imagine someone seeing the mirrored M-W logo and going "God, I need a smoke". In this way, we are all the better for it.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#427

Post by [deleted] »

Aperocky wrote: post #269

Freedom of expression inherently includes the freedom to pay for expression. What are your expression worth if you wouldn’t be able to pay a service, cellphone/internet connection/reddit gold to express that? How is paying ads different than paying a campaigner set up a loudspeaker in the middle of a city? But then again, since twitter is a private enterprise, I fully respect their right to act on their own platform.

[deleted]

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#428

Post by xkjkls »

afarrell wrote: post #318
product50 wrote: post #254

So why not use the same methodology on TV or print as well and ban political ads across? Why is social media singled out here? What about ads on YouTube? This is nothing but a copout solution. Twitter doesn't have the will nor the capital to be part of the debate here (and political ads are likely too small for them to care) - so they are trying to gain strategy credit by just saying this is a bad idea. NYTimes is ha…

> This is nothing but a copout solution. Who's solution is a copout? You're saying that it is inconsistent for Twitter to not accept payment for political ads, but a print newspaper to do so. This is correct. But that inconsistency reflects the fact that the decisions are being made by different people. What would be a non-copout solution that twitter could implement?

And why is a copout bad?

If we a society decide that Twitter shouldn't be the arbiter of valid and invalid political advertising, why is them avoiding the issue entirely a bad thing?

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#429

Post by pm90 »

hailwren wrote: post #392
exergy wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This level of pedantry drives me up the wall. Not everything needs to be invented from first principles. Profile ads are banned, yes, because they involve teh candidates. Policy ads are banned because they again involve politics. We can start anywhere ! Let's say 'nothing from any entity that receives money from a political party'. Or 'anything mentioning election candidates'. Or 'anything with certain keywords in it…

It's not pedantry at all. Look at F1's battle with cigarette advertising for a concrete example. Certainly, explicit advertising is easy to stop, but there are many ways of advertising things surreptitiously. A great example of this is Ferrari's evolution to avoid the F1 cigarette ban. They started with the word Marlboro on the side of their car, then they moved to a barcode that resembled a pack of cigarettes, and n…

What point are you trying to make? The system seems working as intended if Ferrari is going to such great lengths to avoid explicit advertisement.

There will always be those who break laws, doesn’t mean that we should stop making laws.

Re: Twitter to ban political advertising

#430

Post by heretoo »

nlh wrote: post #74

Bravo. That whole thread is smart, well-reasoned, and puts democracy above profits. Good for them. I particularly like his last point: > A final note. This isn’t about free expression. This is about paying for reach. And paying to increase the reach of political speech has significant ramifications that today’s democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle. It’s worth stepping back in order to address. Whic…

> It’s certainly not what the first amendment is about.

Only one country has the first amendment, and this decision from twitter is globally applicable, so it shouldn't factor into the decision.

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