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Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#81

Post by markdown »

chippy wrote: post #28
simion314 wrote: post #16

I am not from US, I hate FB during electoral campagins not because of paid ads but because of people sharing tons of political crap, I would like to hide all political post and shares of my friends and ads.

This is the problem with reddit also and twitter - indeed all social media. The main problem is that US political elections "season" runs for 2 years! So out of every 4 years, half of the time is campaigning season so it means that the rest of the worlds social media is polluted with "tons of political crap" 50% of the time. For US folks: look at how other western democracies run their electoral campaigns to help und…

> This is the problem with reddit also and twitter - indeed all social media.

Twitter provide a great solution; the ability to mute words. Just mute the names of election candidates and a few other choice buzzwords and all that noise will be gone.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#82

Post by rewoi »

justaguyhere wrote: post #65
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #41

This is a good move but could go further, really wish FB and moreso Twitter would include a big switch in their settings that was just "Politics On/Off" hide all political ads, and tweets and retweets for people who just don't want to see that for mental health reasons or just because they're not there for that (e.g brand customer support workers) but they'd never do that because I suspect they ideologically think it…

What difference is letting users turn off political ads going to make? This is only going to help people who do not care about these in the first place - they will turn it off and FB would be slightly better off for them. These people are not the problem. The people who ignorantly argue, share unvetted stories, propaganda etc will not turn this off. FB likely crunched some numbers and decided the PR they will get fro…

It is possible to individually block "activists" on FB.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#83

Post by imtringued »

arethuza wrote: post #60
bhaavan wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Political ads are explicitly marked, and can be turned off. On the other hand, to classify user generated content as political or not is non-trivial. More so, there is no clear universal definition of this. One man's politics is other man's "important announcement". With such ambiguous definitions it is hard to train a ML model for this purpose explicitly. On the other hand, if you downvote and dismiss political post…

Out of curiosity I looked up what the definition of politics is and got something like: "Politics is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations between individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status." Based on a definition like that I'd be tempted to think that politics free social media is an oxymoron.

Although I do not disagree with that definition I think it is valuable to make a distinction between government politics and "every day" politics.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#84

Post by throeawayjoe »

The idea behind this "turning off political ads" is to prevent the masses by being fooled into voting for one party over the other due to "fake" news.

As someone who was born and brought up in a third world country, this is my observation because I have a different perspective on this.

People like Donald Trump have won elections despite severe personal and public failings. And the reason they win is because they are demagogues. They have the ability to connect to voter's emotions.

Obama is not a demagogue but he dripped with Charisma and had the ability to connect to everyone and share his vision for a better America. Likewise for Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan had immense Charisma.

Hillary Clinton is not an inspiring person. She did not have the same kind of Charisma or Vibe that Obama had.

All of this started because Hillary Clinton lost the election in 2016 to Donald Trump. If Hillary Clinton won the election, this wouldn't even be a discussion.

There is this quote from Rocky Balboa:

Now if you know what you're worth then go out and get what you're worth. But ya gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain't where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody! Cowards do that and that ain't you!

If Obama contested in the 2016 elections, there is a good chance he would have beaten Trump. It is true that there was fake news. We can't assume that the fake news was the sole cause for Hillary Clinton's defeat. This is a media narrative which was unable to come to terms with the fact that a racist narc like DT was able to defeat Clinton.

DT would have beaten Hillary regardless of the "fake articles" on Facebook. Blaming it on anything else is the same as not taking responsibility for being wrong about the election.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#85

Post by simion314 »

sneak wrote: post #73
simion314 wrote: post #16

I am not from US, I hate FB during electoral campagins not because of paid ads but because of people sharing tons of political crap, I would like to hide all political post and shares of my friends and ads.

Unfollow your friends that post boring partisan nonsense. Alternately, just delete your Facebook account, and stop donating content and ad revenue to a censorship platform.

I done that for some persons, and for people that post religious stuff daily. I hide all from them. But there could be a solution, like say I am a honest person that I want to get elected in a possition in my little village, can I post things and somehow mention to show it only for people that are in the same village as me, so my friends in other locations don't have to see the local stuff.

I am not a big FB user, but FB is the only way I can keep in touch with some of my colleagues from school/university , sadly soem of them are not on FB and the old phone numbers are not valid so they are just gone, no idea if they are still alive

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#86

Post by kwistzhaderach »

throeawayjoe wrote: post #84

The idea behind this "turning off political ads" is to prevent the masses by being fooled into voting for one party over the other due to "fake" news. As someone who was born and brought up in a third world country, this is my observation because I have a different perspective on this. People like Donald Trump have won elections despite severe personal and public failings. And the reason they win is because they are…

It’s honestly shocking that in a country of 300M people u can’t find someone economically and politically sane to lead the country.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#87

Post by Craighead »

throeawayjoe wrote: post #84

The idea behind this "turning off political ads" is to prevent the masses by being fooled into voting for one party over the other due to "fake" news. As someone who was born and brought up in a third world country, this is my observation because I have a different perspective on this. People like Donald Trump have won elections despite severe personal and public failings. And the reason they win is because they are…

You seem under educated about the perverseness of Cambridge Analytica, the Mueller report, and WikiLeaks role in the 2016 election. Calling those aspects "fake news" and saying "hrc was weak" is a bad faith argument

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#88

Post by SyneRyder »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #41

This is a good move but could go further, really wish FB and moreso Twitter would include a big switch in their settings that was just "Politics On/Off" hide all political ads, and tweets and retweets for people who just don't want to see that for mental health reasons or just because they're not there for that (e.g brand customer support workers) but they'd never do that because I suspect they ideologically think it…

> really wish FB and moreso Twitter would include a big switch in their settings that was just "Politics On/Off" hide all political ads, and tweets and retweets for people who just don't want to see that

Twitter has mute filters that do this. Add the surnames of some political candidates to your mute filters, and that alone will improve your Twitter experience - moreso if you use a third party client (like Fenix on Android or Tweetbot on iOS) that doesn't also show likes or random tweet suggestions from people you don't follow.

The downside is you have to put in the filter creation work yourself, but on the plus-side you know exactly what you're filtering out and why. Don't leave it to Twitter to be the judge of what you should and shouldn't see. If you look in your settings, you'll find Twitter is absolutely horrible at determining what you're interested in: on the Twitter website, look at More -> Settings & Privacy -> Account -> Your Twitter Data -> Interests and Ads Data -> Interests From Twitter, and be amazed at all the topics you've never heard of and political candidates that Twitter thinks you are interested in, and is using to push ads and tweet suggestions in your face.

Bonus points for adding other clickbait words to your mute filters, like "outrage". Maybe consider various -isms, like "capitalism" and/or "socialism" if you want to avoid being drawn into decades long debates that won't be solved in 280 characters.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#89

Post by whywhywhywhy »

dillonmckay wrote: post #68
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's my feed should I not get a say what I see in it and what I don't? This is what mean by ideology, the idea that it's more important to make sure I see the right things so hopefully I think the right way takes precedent over how it makes me feel. This sort of thing seems to be all what modern journalism is too, it's all through the lens of editorial now. I don't want to be on Twitter, I'm on Twitter because Google…

Why do you think it is ‘your’ feed?

Because I curated it, I'm the curator of the exhibition of tweets by artists which is being held within Twitters gallery.

Re: Facebook to let users turn off political adverts

#90

Post by dingaling »

madeofpalk wrote: post #80
toyg wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could say the same of most of the web, from Github to HN...

You can say that about life It is an exceptionally privileged situation to be in when you believe you can simply opt out of politics.

Everyone's life is affected by politics, but I'd contest that it's entirely possible to opt out of participating in the political process. Many people simply don't have the time in their life to take part.

I have a friend who works two jobs and has two kids, when they get home they make dinner, do homeworks and go to bed. For them politics is something abstract on the TV news.

It's much like art, where ever you go there's some form of art. But you don't need to lift a pencil and do art or even talk about it.

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