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Google, Meta and Microsoft to stop showing political ads in the EU

politico.eu

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Re: Google, Meta and Microsoft to stop showing political ads in the EU

#51

Post by baby »

seydor wrote: post #47
baby wrote: post #41

It is messed up in the US that a political party basically wins because they spend more money in ads and utilize ads more intelligently. I mean things like this: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/04/election-mus... > A political action committee (Pac) linked to Elon Musk is accused of targeting Jewish and Arab American voters in swing states with dramatically different messages about Kamala Harris’s positi…

Democrats outspent Trump in 2020, 2024 and 2016 https://www.npr.org/2024/11/01/nx-s1-5173712/2024-election-a... https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/10/21/us/elections/...

Two things:

1. as in the example of my post, you can do extremely dirty ads tactics that are much more effective than plain ads, making your money go a long way

2. these don't count social media bots, especially when financed by external actors

Re: Google, Meta and Microsoft to stop showing political ads in the EU

#52

Post by seydor »

Bjartr wrote: post #45
seydor wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and how does a sole candidate for mayor begin this 'grassroots campaign'. If you seriously start knocking on people's doors, you re most likely to end up dead or in prison in this day and age

What makes that more true today than, say, 40 years ago?

online communication, city densities, very fast movement of people, immigration, inexistence of third spaces, helicopter parenting and so many other things

Re: Google, Meta and Microsoft to stop showing political ads in the EU

#53

Post by jacobgkau »

Certhas wrote: post #17
thewebguyd wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That'd be great. But how would you define what's advertising and what's not? I've built a relatively successful professional photography side hussle without "advertising" as in, I've never paid for an ad on any of the social platforms or google ads. Most of my business comes from word of mouth, or hits on my website. But, is the SEO I do advertising? What about when I share my work to my socials, is that advertising?…

We have successfully banned Cigarette ads. Not saying there aren't things to sort out, and lines to be drawn, but it's by no means impossible.

We've successfully banned cigarette ads from TV and radio. We haven't banned them from the wall at gas stations. They're also not banned on the internet, legally.

Do you want to ban advertising, or ban TV and radio advertising?

Re: Google, Meta and Microsoft to stop showing political ads in the EU

#56

Post by dylan604 »

cj wrote: post #4
tdb7893 wrote: post #2

Ignoring political implications here and just on a personal level I wish political ads were banned. Quite possibly my least favorite type of ad to see and I've never felt meaningfully informed by them (generally quite the opposite).

> Campaigners say the law will cause a harmful loss of information I find this quote from the article amusing. If EU political ads are anything like USA political ads, the objective of the ad is rarely, if ever, to educate the audience. The objective of most political ads is to confuse, disorient, and distort the narrative.

Clearly, they educate us into why they think their opponent is bad. /s

Reform should state that campaign ads can only discuss what the candidate's positions are, and not be able to say anything about their opponent. If you can't tell me what your plans are and all you can do is say why the other position is wrong, then you're not showing me you'd be an effective person to hold office.

However, that's what your website is for. Stop interrupting my whatever I was doing.

Re: Google, Meta and Microsoft to stop showing political ads in the EU

#57

Post by charcircuit »

simion314 wrote: post #11
dangus wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a good way to trap everyone with incumbent corporations. No quitting your corporate job to start your own business, you’re not allowed to advertise.

There could be an index where you list your product/service, so people can find your stuff when they need it. But yeah will be harder to manipulate people to buy your miracle supplement or other garbage that is 99% of the current ads I see. I do not watch Tv, use ad blockers so after years of not watching TV I watched a bit recently and most ads are supplements/"naturists medicine" and for some reasons on youtube wit…

>so people can find your stuff when they need it

And how do are people informed about new products they may need or changes to existing products that they now may need? What about reminding people about things they needed, but they forgot about? There needs to be someway for companies to reach consumers that isn't initiated by the consumer.

Re: Google, Meta and Microsoft to stop showing political ads in the EU

#58

Post by Marsymars »

ripped_britches wrote: post #22

I am a big fan of commercial advertising. I think it drives our global economy. However I think political and medical advertising need to be tightly regulated.

> I think it drives our global economy.

It does, but in the same way that gambling drives the Macau economy.

Re: Google, Meta and Microsoft to stop showing political ads in the EU

#59

Post by btown »

paxys wrote: post #34

> “Smaller, newer parties and independent candidates will lose an affordable channel to reach voters, while large, well-followed accounts remain largely unaffected,” Grassroots campaigns are not banned. Organic social media activity is not banned. Smaller parties will be just fine. This will only negatively impact politicians/parties/corporations who think that spending more money entitles them to a louder voice.

While I'm sympathetic to the sentiment here, it can be overly simplistic in some common cases. For instance, a newcomer might benefit disproportionately from the first X units of ad spending to "get their name out," relative to an incumbent or someone with a famous name spending the exact same price on the same X units, whose incremental effect might be less.

Alternately, a local candidate might not have funding for traditional media spots but might want to experiment with smaller ad buys, or might appeal to a demographic less likely to see traditional media spots. In all of these cases, this regulation disproportionately helps their opponent.

Of course, the incumbent often has funding for multiple times the ad spend of the newcomer, so the status quo wasn't necessarily a good situation either. Publicly funded campaigns, providing every candidate with an equal amount of money to be used across all types of advertising, could be highly effective here, but only in contexts where this can't be end-run by e.g. PACs in the U.S. post-Citizens United.

Re: Google, Meta and Microsoft to stop showing political ads in the EU

#60

Post by decremental »

Dr_Incelheimer wrote: post #35
parasti wrote: post #18

As a EU citizen, I don't care? People are not swayed by political ads. They're swayed by influencers who push political agendas covertly.

That's because you are a HN user, which selects for above average intelligence people (yes, even the webdevs). You are not the type of person who sways election results. Ads work. You don't need carefully crafted subliminal messages, you could write "vote for me" everywhere and it would have a noticeable effect on the election results

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