>Ads can be an important part of voice - especially for candidates and advocacy groups the media might not otherwise cover so they can get their message into debates
It's interesting how hard Zuck is working to try and conflate the idea of 'free speech' with paid advertisements. To put it another way, if advertising on Facebook is part of my free speech, surely Zuck must run my adverts despite the fact I have no money to pay him for them.
Lazare 1629 days ago [-]
I notice you don't address his actual point though.
If, let's say, a group advocating for the abolishment of asset forfeiture wants to communicate their message, and the media is not covering it, it would be natural for them to try paying for ads, and the obvious place to put ads are on social media, since that's where the eyeballs are (cf, the collapse of the news media). If social media bans those ads then while the group clearly still has free speech, they will have little way to meaningfully exercise it.
You might say - and I'd certainly agree - that the real problem is a world where everyone is on Twitter and Facebook to the exclusion of all else, and thus a world where 3-4 CEOs can unilaterally decide that nobody needs to hear anything about asset forfeiture (or whatever). And yet, that's the world we're in.
(You also don't seem to understand what "free speech" is. By your logic, a law banning the purchase television ads for Democratic candidates - but allowing the purchase of television ads for Republicans - would be okay, because after all, those ads cost money, so it's not restricting the Democratic candidates right to free speech. That's absurd, no?)
landryraccoon 1629 days ago [-]
I'm sorry, I don't follow.
If a group wants to post on social media, they can just post on social media. Ads increase the reach of those with money. That is exactly what they do and nothing more. Why would we want to further amplify the voice of those who have money? The fact that the cause is the abolition of X or the support of Y is a non sequitur, in either case it is the viewpoint of someone with the money to promote their voice.
I have very little concern that the opinions of those with large quantities of money at their disposal are underrepresented in politics, or do not have the ability to make their voices heard.
AnthonyMouse 1629 days ago [-]
> The fact that the cause is the abolition of X or the support of Y is a non sequitur, in either case it is the viewpoint of someone with the money to promote their voice.
What you're missing is that all viewpoints you'll ever see are intrinsically those of someone with the money to promote their voice.
Suppose you have an idea in your head and you want to get it out there. The first thing you have to do is express that idea. Write it down or create a video etc. That takes time, which is an opportunity cost. If it takes you an hour, that's an hour you couldn't spend working for money, which means that somebody who has to spend that time working for money doesn't have the time to express their idea.
On top of that, the more time you spend polishing your expression, the more convincing you can make it, so right off the bat there is a direct relationship between time/money and speech.
Then you need to get people to look at it. If all you do is write a document that sits in a drawer in your house, nobody will ever see it. So you need to spend more time distributing your idea, or get other people who are willing to spend their time distributing it.
Political advertising is just paying a third party to do that for you. It costs less than hiring a staff of people to promote the idea "organically" (otherwise it would be poor value for money and nobody would pay for it), which means it enables people with less money to get their message in front of people.
Barrin92 1628 days ago [-]
>What you're missing is that all viewpoints you'll ever see are intrinsically those of someone with the money to promote their voice.
If I may jump in here, I live in a country where political advertisement is strictly regulated and almost all political debate takes place on public television, available to everyone, and there's a commitment to neutrality in reporting and equal representation of all parties.
Now this surely doesn't give everyone the same voice and many people are still marginalised and despite the lack of money involvement are excluded, but it may be worth pointing out that the US status quo is not the only model on this planet.
Instead of increasing the asymmetry by letting those with more money expand their influence even more, you could take measures to level the playing field.
roenxi 1628 days ago [-]
Is your country of a similar size and complexity as the United States? Or are you from one of the smaller countries that is more comparable to a US city?
I can see all sorts of things working for a small country that do not scale to a large country. Something that works well in, eg, Denmark might be appropriate if applied to somewhere of comparable size and complexity like the New York city centre but in appropriate if applied to a continent.
Barrin92 1628 days ago [-]
I hail from Germany. Not exactly US sized, but not a small country either.
One thing that I think would actually be easier to do in the US to achieve the same thing is to cap and publicly finance campaign spending. Given the strong emphasis on free speech that the US has it might be simpler to go the reverse route. If 'money is speech', even out the playing field on a financial basis.
AnthonyMouse 1628 days ago [-]
I don't think you even need to cap it. Political spending has diminishing returns. Give candidates enough money to allow them to make their constituents aware of their positions and the competing candidate can't undo that just by outspending them.
The problem is when candidates have to take money from special interests just in order to buy enough advertising to cause anyone to have even heard of them. Provide enough public money so that candidates don't have to do that, and then candidates won't have to do that.
thefounder 1628 days ago [-]
>> The problem is when candidates have to take money from special interests just in order to buy enough advertising to cause anyone to have even heard of them. Provide enough public money so that candidates don't have to do that, and then candidates won't have to do that.
You forget that there is never enough money or enough advertising. All the money comes from "special interest groups" except if is provided by the government. Of course people "hear" the candidates...it's just that the candidates want a 24/7 audience, lately they have whole media corporations delivering the message for them. As we know most of the media organisations are now partisan (either by choice or by obligation). Maybe little regulation wouldn't hurt to give a chance to the little guy who can't afford to buy a media corporation?
AnthonyMouse 1628 days ago [-]
> You forget that there is never enough money or enough advertising.
Yes there is. That's the point. Candidates regularly defeat better-funded opponents because there is a threshold of exposure past which the voters have heard what there is to hear from both candidates and more spending has diminishing returns.
> Of course people "hear" the candidates
No they don't. Can you name all of the candidates running for the Democratic nomination this year? First try to off the top of your head. Now here's a list:
How many of the ones you missed have less than $5M right now vs. more than that? Pretty good correlation, right? Yet I doubt your preference between Sanders vs. Biden has that much to do with which of them has more money, because they both have more than the threshold amount needed to make you aware of their positions.
> Maybe little regulation wouldn't hurt to give a chance to the little guy who can't afford to buy a media corporation?
How is it supposed to help the little guy who can't afford to buy a media corporation to pass a law restricting the little guy from buying political advertising, meanwhile the people who can afford to buy a media corporation carry on doing so as ever?
dantheman 1628 days ago [-]
There are those that are famous, those with a lot of time, those who work in the media, those who are already politicians, those that are popular .... why are their voices and reach allowed when those with money are not?
Barrin92 1628 days ago [-]
you may very well make the case that mainstream news suffers from the same disease.
There's an interesting study out there (I'll dig it up later if I find it), that finds that the average American has virtually no influence or voice on what is discussed in media. There is nothing civic or egalitarian about American media or politics any more, it's no surprise that it appears like a cynical spectacle. It is indeed all advertisers, famous people, full-time twitter agitators, and Fox and CNN.
The irony here is I think that the social platforms actually could be used to authentically promote common voices if they were designed with that commitment in mind. If the rules don't change for the owners, I don't see it happening.
pm90 1628 days ago [-]
I don't really get your point. What you're saying is that a good message takes a lot of resources to communicate effectively. That is true regardless of whether you can use social media to promote those messages.
Conversely, targeted advertisement lets you bombard people with certain inclinations with ads that nudge them to behave in a certain way. That isn't free speech, its targeted manipulation. The targeting is whats important here. For selling goods and services, its fine. For selling leaders or tarnishing leaders, its evil.
NeedMoreTea 1628 days ago [-]
After the decades learning that targeted advertising to sell goods and services comes with a dramatic tracking and data gathering overreach, I'd like to ban the lot. It's still targeted manipulation. Better to have no tracking and no targeting.
Allow opt-in targeting by allowing classified ads, old-school newspaper and Computer Shopper style. Otherwise I think it is now pretty clear the cost is too high.
AnthonyMouse 1628 days ago [-]
> I don't really get your point. What you're saying is that a good message takes a lot of resources to communicate effectively. That is true regardless of whether you can use social media to promote those messages.
The point is that it costs more to promote if you can't buy advertising, which increases the advantage of those with a boatload of money. The people who own Fox News or Facebook would still get to decide what everybody sees but then someone who disagrees with them couldn't even buy advertising to air their competing ideas.
The person with zero dollars has zero voice either way. The question is whether someone with thousands of dollars should be able to get their message in front of the relevant people, or only someone with billions of dollars.
> Conversely, targeted advertisement lets you bombard people with certain inclinations with ads that nudge them to behave in a certain way. That isn't free speech, its targeted manipulation. The targeting is whats important here. For selling goods and services, its fine. For selling leaders or tarnishing leaders, its evil.
Suppose Big Oil wants to build a pipeline in your back yard. They're going to have your neighbor's house seized through eminent domain (or maybe yours), then install a big ugly pipe that will reduce your property value and forevermore be carrying flammable poisonous carcinogenic petroleum that could at any time leak out into your groundwater. You have no idea that this is in the works and won't know until it's too late unless somebody tells you about it right now.
I live a hundred miles from you along the same planned pipeline and I don't want it, so I get together all the people I can find and pool our money to buy issue ads to notify everyone in the path of the pipeline that it's going to happen if we don't get together and oppose it. We can't afford to buy nation-wide untargeted ads, but we can afford to target the people who live right near the planned pipeline and have views that make it likely they'll help us oppose it.
Is this to be prohibited in your opinion? What do you suggest those people do instead in that case?
EsssM7QVMehFPAs 1628 days ago [-]
The Facebook shills are certainly not foreign to the influencer group that is HN if you track recent news discussions.
jorathexploruh1 1628 days ago [-]
No we’re not missing that
Just because that’s “how it was” does not mean we have to continue to politically acquiesce to it going forward
If that’s your argument for doing nothing wouldn’t that have been a great way to frame it 250 years ago
“Well Britain & the king are just doing what they always have done!”
Grow up, man. Grow up HN.
This is fealty to nonsense emotional crying on the part of average humans who have been emotionally fluffed into believing they’re owed our deference
Until Zuck can conjure a plague or part the seas, he’s just one man and can go screw
texuf 1629 days ago [-]
Just because I’m subscribed to someone on social media doesn’t mean they show up in my feed. That change happened long ago. It’s only guaranteed to show up if they pay.
r00fus 1629 days ago [-]
So Facebook - who controls your feed (and made said change) now wants to say that their right to prioritize (based on money) what stuff goes on your feed shouldn't be questioned?
semiotagonal 1628 days ago [-]
> their right to prioritize (based on money) what stuff goes on your feed
It's not your feed, it's their feed; you're just the person eating it.
fermenflo 1628 days ago [-]
Thank you...
Everyone seems to be forgetting that this is a 100% opt-in service. Why do we get to say what FB is obligated to do and to what standards they have to keep their website at?
semiotagonal 1628 days ago [-]
Well, when it establishes a dominant position in the market using tactics that are no longer allowed, we do get a right to say that they should be broken up, or forced to start from scratch without their user data.
My own two cents is that Facebook should be dismantled to restore competition, then be allowed to do whatever it wants.
TooSmugToFail 1628 days ago [-]
Facebook should be dismantled because they effectively broke democracy.
From the earliest of its beginnings, one of the greatest flaws of democracy was masses being susceptible to manipulation, and Facebook massively amplified this. It has been repeatedly and reliably used for manipulation of voters with unprecedented effectiveness and on an unprecedented scale.
Trump and Brexit showed that even the oldest and most mature democracies are not impervious to such manipulation.
I was shocked how Facebook's Libra initiative quickly detracted people: all of a sudden, we're all discussing whether they should be allowed to run crypto currency, and nobody is talking about how they broke democracy. Almost as if the whole Libra thing is a giant distraction...
core-questions 1628 days ago [-]
Because Facebook occupies a nearly-monopolistic position that has somewhat replaced the public square in modern life. It's not just any other service, anymore; it's far bigger and needs to be legislated upon as such.
philipov 1628 days ago [-]
Things stop being opt-in when too many people start using them. There's a point where private platforms become so big they begin to function as public platforms. At that point, not opting in becomes tantamount to becoming an off-grid prepper, or religious hermit. Participating in society is technically opt-in as well, but because it is tied into all parts of life, not opting in requires you to opt out.
205guy 1628 days ago [-]
Because that is what they advertize themselves as (connecting with people and seeing what they post), they should be held to the image they project.
The truth is they let you see most of your friends' and family's posts, but pretty much any commercial or non-profit's post is held for ransom. If you "like" a local band or want to hear from the local gardening club, they will be encouraged to pay to "boost" their posts to you.
If fb had to say "you will see the posts from your connections based on how much they pay us," up front when registering and in all their ads (like the fast-talking disclosures in US drug advertizing), then people would have a more accurate view of the service they are using. Of course, long privacy disclosures would be necessary too.
Braggadocious 1628 days ago [-]
I would argue facebook isn't a 100% opt in service at all. When political advertising on facebook won Trump the election, that changed the global landscape for everyone, regardless whether they were on facebook or not. It's like saying the automotive industry or the oil industry are a 100% opt in service, so why regulate them either? Facebook has as much of a tailpipe as any other commercial enterprise with effects felt by everyone.
aggie 1629 days ago [-]
It's not going to show up in everyone's feed if you pay either. You're just talking degrees of exposure. Getting to 100% of eyeballs vs. 80% or 10% is arbitrary.
lonelappde 1629 days ago [-]
Why do people with extra time get to be heard more than people with extra money? I don't have the ability to take 20% time off my work to promote my message, but I have saved up some money.
notSupplied 1628 days ago [-]
One can have 1000x more money than a middle class person, but there are no "time billionaires"
xwowsersx 1629 days ago [-]
Yes, but ads with no reach effectively means you have no meaningful voice in the public discourse. So it's free speech, but without any teeth.
aggie 1629 days ago [-]
Why should any individual be given outsize voice in a democracy, if not by amplification from many others?
whiddershins 1629 days ago [-]
Well I think people who put in more effort get more influence on average.
Effort can take the form of standing on the street holding a sign, and it takes money to make a sign, and time to stand there.
It can take the form of going door to door and talking to people and giving them printed materials. You need the money for the printed materials, and the time to canvass the neighborhood.
Same for running for local political office.
Same for making a documentary, or a podcast, or a YouTube channel.
Same for running a Facebook ad.
Communication takes time and money. Getting money also takes time, to earn it, to inherit it, to ask donors or investors for it...
There’s no way to have any communication at all without these elements.
wolco 1628 days ago [-]
No one is given anything you want a largerr voice join up with others.
Those with money can pay someone to tell someone else something.
Those with time can tell everyone they meet.
That's how a democracy. Some have bigger voices compared to others.
lonelappde 1629 days ago [-]
Why is outsized voice reserved only for the promotion of consumerist consumption? That's the pnly political view that deserves a microphone?
CharlesColeman 1629 days ago [-]
> Yes, but ads with no reach effectively means you have no meaningful voice in the public discourse. So it's free speech, but without any teeth.
Zuck himself, ironically, has helped create that situation by deliberately reducing organic reach to force people to pay to be heard.
This is a cynical ploy for money on Zuck's/Facebook's part. If they really cared about free speech, they wouldn't hobble the organic reach of political actors.
AnthonyMouse 1629 days ago [-]
It's possible for both of those things to be true at the same time -- that they should neither deliberately restrict organic reach nor refuse political advertising on the basis of content.
philipov 1628 days ago [-]
Right, they should refuse all advertising, regardless of content. They have made themselves into the largest public platform and have no business taking bribes. If they want to be a profit-generating business, they should stop being the public forum.
newen 1629 days ago [-]
That's why people build movements, why activism is a thing. Money shortcuts all of that and gives undue voice to people with the most money.
jackinloadup 1629 days ago [-]
By that definition people who want to voice their opinions shouldn't pay for any service which would amplify that voice. That could be a sign, megaphone, stage, internet, website, youtube channel (camera).
If I'm able to have more signs or youtube channels people will pay more attention to me and thus I'm using an advantage the other party may not have the financial ability to respond to.
I think this idea could go further but it seems obvious that money is another unbiased tool to promote your speech. Money doesn't have a political affiliation. People can use money in a biased way just like they can use a camera, tv channel, or sign to have a bias. The medium isn't biased the way it's used is.
newen 1629 days ago [-]
But you are ignoring the difference in power that people have in this context. Especially in this age, when inequality is so high, it is naive to consider money to be an unbiased tool.
Especially when we already live in a massively unequal stage where a few coorporations have access to the most popular websites, magazines, newpapers, tv channels, allowing money into this equation as an unbiased tool will only increase this inequality in the ability to spread a message.
I think we as a society should make changes so that money has as little influence as possible. Of course, that battle will never end and there will be pushback from the small minority of people of have the overwhelming amount of wealth in this world, but changes such as banning political ads in twitter is a very good start.
matz1 1628 days ago [-]
I don't think you can eliminate inequality. So you remove money, then it will simply be replaced by something else. Then there will be someone who has more of whatever it is that replaced money, thus you create different kind of inequality.
newen 1628 days ago [-]
Why does there have to be some permanent solution to a problem? There is no permanent solution to crime, for example. You just have law enforcement because we as a society decided that crime is bad.
Similarly, if we decide that inequality in terms of being able to politically influence people is bad, and money exacerbates that inequality, then we can ban political ads. And if something else comes along that does the same thing, ban that too in a way that makes sense.
Having such a small number of people wield such huge political influence is a shame, but what is even worse is when people accept that as inevitable and perpetuates that myth.
matz1 1628 days ago [-]
In regards to crime, i think you are talking about reducing crime, not eliminating it.
My post was just talking about eliminating inequality. I make no claim about reducing inequality.
newen 1628 days ago [-]
That's really a motte and bailey situation then, isn't it? You say that you are talking about eliminating inequality, but then you use that to argue that reducing inequality isn't possible while still allowing yourself to retreat to the eliminating inequality position when challenged.
matz1 1628 days ago [-]
I say eliminating inequality may be impossible. No where I make claim about reducing inequality.
wolco 1628 days ago [-]
Money is our best proxy for work/effect.
Removing money has been tried in places like Russia. People stop working and if they are forced will not try as hard.
Money has been part since the beginning. To vote you needed to own property which made sense because land owners paid the government in the form of taxes. Personal income taxes came after the war to pay for the war debts.
chillacy 1628 days ago [-]
I don't see the parent's post advocating for removing money entirely, rather flattening the curve or reducing the winner-take-all effect. I think most of us would be happy with not a flat curve but a more gentle gradient, instead of a hyper exponential curve.
By the way every time there's an unrestrained hyper exponential curve, it leads to civil unrest pretty quickly. A lot of terrible things come in the wake of economic hardship.
aluminussoma 1629 days ago [-]
Is activism so pure? The activists I see have nice signs and people protesting during business hours when the rest of us are working. Printing good signs costs money. There is big money behind a lot of activists, just better hidden.
nicpottier 1629 days ago [-]
Maybe at least that's creating some employment opportunities? Especially in an auction model like Facebooks we are spending millions (billions?) in a zero sum game where people bid against each other to no benefit except Facebook's.
bobcostas55 1629 days ago [-]
If a group wants to write an article, they can just write an article. Newspapers increase the reach of those with money. That is exactly what they do and nothing more. Why would we want to further amplify the voice of those who have money?
Angostura 1629 days ago [-]
I humbly disagree
> it would be natural for them to try paying for ads, and the obvious place to put ads are on social media
It would be natural to them to post to their Facebook page because that's what social media is for and then for their committed network of supporters to repost etc.
Remember - that's the advantage of social media - you can quickly get the work out to your supporters without having to go through intermediaries, or having to pay for advertising.
Lazare 1629 days ago [-]
That's not how social media works. Feeds are highly curated.
> you can quickly get the work out to your supporters without having to go through intermediaries, or having to pay for advertising.
How do you think Facebook makes money? And as a followup, why do you think people pay money to run ads on Facebook?
Like, I 100% agree with you that this is how it should work, and it's how we all thought it would work 15 years ago, but it feels oddly disconnected from the world we live in.
v4dok 1629 days ago [-]
Indeed this is the way it works but I think you restrict your view by taking social media as some society constant. If there is no way for the public to find the information it looks for in a meaningful way in facebook or twitter, it will migrate to something else or push it to change.
It might push the platforms to feed people with an equal share of all sides instead of feeding them what the "want" and anyone else has to pay
roenxi 1629 days ago [-]
Paid advertising to get ideas out has existed for at least as long as we've had newspapers and probably a lot longer.
It sounds nice to say that we are going to keep some communication channels free of political speech. It is an option. But it is possible (I claim: likely) that more communication leads to better political outcomes, so sealing off easy-to-use channels like advertising may not actually help.
JohnFen 1629 days ago [-]
> But it is possible (I claim: likely) that more communication leads to better political outcomes
Not when that speech is deceptive, and particularly not when people can pay money to a company to ensure that those lies are disseminated as widely as possible.
kyboren 1628 days ago [-]
> But it is possible [...] that more communication leads to better political outcomes
I believe this is true and also that this is basically the hypothesis motivating freedom of speech under law. However, I believe that modern digital political advertising is a very different kind of communication than the open, genuine discussion in a free marketplace of ideas that free speech advocates often envision.
I think one big problem is information fragmentation taken to the extreme: Each person is now subjected to his or her own individually-targeted propaganda. It is a non-genuine, abusive form of individualized communication that in my opinion tends to erode opportunity for political consensus.
In my view, some forms of political advertising are perfectly acceptable. Attending a political debate and arguing well for your candidacy is perfectly acceptable. Enlisting Cambridge Analytica or foreign intelligence services to employ individual psychometric profiles to serve up the most effectively manipulative propaganda is not acceptable.
Advertising that is more generally broadcast as opposed to narrowly targeted is perfectly acceptable, and potentially even desirable for political discourse. Advertising that is "too" targeted is potentially corrosive to political discourse. I would love to see proposals on how to draw the line, legislatively, that would address these concerns and also pass strict scrutiny.
birdyrooster 1628 days ago [-]
Social media works this way on the scale of millions of people.
People disseminate unpaid political messages all the time. Curated feeds or not, they are seeing things which are popular amongst them and they reshare posts they like.
You can argue that people aren't interested enough in politics, but paid ads are not a good and balanced way to get people engaged. It leads to them having an even more skewed view of politics as it biases them towards the interest of those with the most money for political ads (as opposed to what is best for their community). Those interest can align in theory, but if we are trying to select the optimal system, why add paid advertisements if we don't need to?
frankbreetz 1629 days ago [-]
Twitter bans political ads, I am pretty sure they still plan on making money.
sk84life 1629 days ago [-]
Twitter,Facebook and Google are all same institute to damp down privacy towards full controlled speech if any.
Please, don't use these sandboxes .. Programmers create real social media for people. Make internet great again, please.
CharlesColeman 1629 days ago [-]
> Feeds are highly curated.
Nitpick: IMHO, feeds aren't curated, since curation implies some kind of human judgement at the least (and preferably an expert's judgement). Feeds are algorithmically sorted. Calling them curated debases the term.
indymike 1629 days ago [-]
That was the case years ago. Facebook does not show every post in your followers stream. Once you get to a certain size, you have to pay to ensure the message gets delivered with boosted posts and such. Many of these political organizations have popular Facebook pages and still have to pay to get their posts into their followers streams.
rebuilder 1629 days ago [-]
Aha, now it makes sense that Zuckerberg is so insistent on keeping political ads.
goldenkey 1629 days ago [-]
The old Myspace behavior of friending everyone you met online has benefited FB in spades... Wow.
sjwright 1629 days ago [-]
Claiming that we must be reliant on private corporations for free speech is a corruption of the very concept. I don't agree with your argument, but to the extent that there's any truth to it the remedy can only be to fix the underlying problem—not submitting to it.
To be clear, my objection isn't to all online advertising but specifically to Zuckerberg defending Facebook's policy with an appeal to free speech. Obviously speech without funding is weak an ineffective, but if Facebook voluntarily chose to eliminate all political advertising, it is irrational to claim that your freedom of speech has been curtailed. Facebook's existence isn't promised to you.
missosoup 1629 days ago [-]
Claiming that one can meaningfully express free speech without relying on corporations is delusion.
If you aren't wielding the megaphone that is twitter/fb/youtube/whatever, then you are not going to be heard. That's just a fact at this point. Social media has in fact lowered the barrier to entry for expressing speech to large audiences, because before social media there were only newspapers and TV networks that cost significantly more and had significantly more preference towards specific agendas.
I understand the ideological desire for that not to be the case, and maybe society could stop and think how to fulfil that desire, but ignoring the facts of today is not constructive at all.
docbrown 1629 days ago [-]
> If you aren't wielding the megaphone that is twitter/fb/youtube/whatever, then you are not going to be heard. That's just a fact at this point.
I disagree. This is only a blanket statement to be taken as fact.
Politicians have been doing town halls, focus groups, and public speeches for decades. Just because we suddenly have social media sites to project their voices to a mich larger audience doesn’t erase all of those. While spending on digital ads have gone up tremendously i’m sure, if we take them out of the equation, people will still be able to hear their candidates voices. Social media websites are not the be-all and end-all of political discourse.
sjwright 1629 days ago [-]
I'm not ignoring facts; I agree we're probably never going to get away from a society where the "real" free speech is a privilege of the wealthy. I only seek to remind us of the principles which run deeper than the specific challenges of this moment.
Lazare 1629 days ago [-]
> Claiming that we must be reliant on private corporations for free speech is a corruption of the very concept
I don't disagree with you! And I think if you'll look around, you'll see it is true. Your ability to get your viewpoint out is, perhaps more than at any other time since the 19th century, dependent on it being deemed acceptable by a handful of powerful gatekeepers. Between the incredible amount of consolidation we've seen in media companies, the dominance Google has on search, the dominance Apple and Google have on app stores, and the dominance a small handful of social media and messaging corporations have on communication, it's kind of amazing how few entities control what so many get to see in every context.
I really, really welcome suggestions on how to fix this. But I don't think pretending it doesn't exist is the answer.
tghw 1629 days ago [-]
First step would be banning political ads on social media platforms. And then everywhere else.
The problem with your initial argument is that paid political ads give even more power to the gatekeepers. It also overlooked the issue that more money equals more speech, meaning grassroots political movements are at an even bigger disadvantage because of the disparity of funds than if everyone had to get their message out organically.
Shivetya 1629 days ago [-]
The press is nothing more than a collection of private organizations and until the advent of the internet and sites to include facebook many of their shenanigans went unchecked.
the is the problem with free speech, you accept you will have both and good and hopefully with a preponderance of free speech the good will out weigh the bad.
once you start trying to limit who and where you give bad speech the edge because those who set the rules also determine which is which
the real threat to free speech and democracy is from those sitting in office successfully scaring the people into letting them set limits on who can say anything and what they can say when in reality the only group that should face any such limits are those in office and those beholden to them and the party they represent.
RomanBob 1629 days ago [-]
It's not possible to be fixed because the majority of people are apolitical, highly illogical and vain.
Democracy as a system dispowers the individual (what is a single voice in a sea of milions). It is perfectly rational to not vote (your single vote would never matter, while the time it takes to go vote will).
Since most people want to spend their lives infinity-scrolling a facebook feed, and for some reason political power can be derived from these people, then facebook will have power by deciding what these people get to see, and if it's not facebook then it's twitter, or google, or the ISP, or the department of the internet, or the TV channels, so on and so forth.
only 0.1% of people care about free platform.
_jal 1629 days ago [-]
Well, I'm sympathetic to where you're coming from, but this is muddled.
"Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one" has been a cliche for a long, long time, and while it is a little flip, there's a truth there. Your freedom of speech does not require me or anyone else to amplify it. Or even listen.
Put another way, do you believe you should be forced to tell other people my message? What about everyone else's?
sjwright 1629 days ago [-]
What I will say is that both extremes are unworkable—from blanket bans to the authoritarian forcing of companies to publish poltical ads against their will.
Everything was fine back when the newspapers had a healthy tension between revenues and credibility. And when the sheer quantity of advertising venues was small and the advertisements devoid of third-order ulterior motives.
Until we can reign in the excesses of online advertising, it's more prudent to be cautious than dive further into the abyss.
davinic 1629 days ago [-]
You're presenting a false dichotomy.
Another solution would be to allow the ads but disallow personalized targeting.
burtonator 1629 days ago [-]
One problem is that we have two extremes:
- Twitter: no political ads
- Facebook: any political ads, including lying.
It would be nice to at LEAST have an agreement that ads saying things that are objectively incorrect should not be run.
For example, if I ran an ad that said "Hacker News was owned by Rupert Murdock" (which is false) then this ad should be blocked.
There might need to be some penalty applied retroactively. Like if you're busted running a fake political ad your company is on timeout for 60 days.
To be fair, I realize this is a difficult problem this is why we might have to add a penalty period.
Surely we can live in a world where we have facts, right?
austincheney 1628 days ago [-]
> You might say - and I'd certainly agree - that the real problem is a world where everyone is on Twitter and Facebook to the exclusion of all else
Then I would say you are living in artificial world delightful for advertisers. I have a Twitter account that I have not really used in a decade and nobody else in my family has ever touched Twitter. My wife has a Facebook account she uses to keep in touch with family, but nobody else in my family has a Facebook account. I know MANY people in my professional world who have neither.
jakelazaroff 1629 days ago [-]
That's just how money works, though: the more you have, the more you can amplify your speech. The "media" (including social media) is really just a group of people with a lot of money who use it to selectively amplify messages.
To that end, I think your position is contradictory. If X group has a moral right to use their money to promote speech via ads, why shouldn't media owners have the same right to use their money to promote speech via their platforms?
crtlaltdel 1629 days ago [-]
don't "traditional" media outlets already decide what ads to run, and reject ads that do not meet their standards (along with any applicable regulatory constraints)? i was under the impression that even the Penny Saver circulars reserve the right to deny ad placements based on their own, internal standards.
obviously i don't know much about this area...if anyone has canonical references they could point to i'd love to learn more.
tripzilch 1626 days ago [-]
You're just switching one filter "is covered by the media" for another filter "has money to pay for ads".
birdyrooster 1628 days ago [-]
You mentioned a minor downside to limiting paid political ads online. We get a huge upside in return.
The game we want is one where political movements can organically gain traction based on popularity.
In this world where political ads are banned, movements don't need financiers to be as successful as they could be. In your example, it's ironic you mention the civil forfeiture movement, because they are exactly the type of people who aren't spending money on ads. PACs and Super PACs for election campaigns are doing the spending. I wish you would acknowledge this.
stjohnswarts 1628 days ago [-]
It doesn't matter, this is a private company, if they don't want to fact check political ads then they should stop showing political ads. No one can make them do anything but it might be a public opinion win for Zuck for once and be good for the way people view Facebook. Twitter is right on this one.
xmprt 1628 days ago [-]
Free speech doesn't mean you're free to force others to hear your point.
xwowsersx 1629 days ago [-]
You last point, in parentheses, is exactly right. Came to say the same thing.
riantogo 1629 days ago [-]
So if I run a advocacy group in favor of asset forfeiture but don’t have money to pay Zuck, then what? Screw my advocacy group? You want folks with money to have “more free speech” and don’t see anything wrong with that?
s1artibartfast 1628 days ago [-]
>You want folks with money to have “more free speech” and don’t see anything wrong with that?
Yes, I don't see anything wrong with that.
If I choose to print 1,000 flyers to hand out, I am using money to amplify my voice. Do you see anything wrong with this?
Facebook Ads are no different.
dfalfndfk 1628 days ago [-]
We should cease pretending scale does not matter. Also that analogies are useful. Your flyer analogy is not useful because it does not _replace_ another flyer. A clear analogy would be buying advertising space in a newspaper.
If you were to buy the entire newspaper's advertising space to amplify your voice I would definitely consider it an abuse of power and wrong.
tw04 1629 days ago [-]
If the media isn't covering their message because they're LYING, then the media is doing their job. The fact Zuckerberg thinks that people who are intentionally misleading people "deserve a voice" is ridiculous. These aren't little white lies, or a bending of the truth, they're bald-faced lies intended to confuse or misinform the voting public. I'm not sure why we're pretending they deserve the same platform as people spreading factual information.
They're more than free to say whatever they want on their own property and in their own homes. But if they want a seat at the media, then at minimum there needs to be a GIANT disclaimer both before and after the advertisement both calling out the false assertions and letting people know the advertisement is strictly for entertainment purposes.
Bostonian 1629 days ago [-]
Who gets to determine what the lies are? I think the following frequently-made assertions are misleading:
(1) Women are paid 72 cents on the dollar for doing the same work as men.
(2) Rich people pay less taxes than the poor.
(3) Blacks are being wantonly killed by the police in large numbers.
However, I think that in a free country, progressives can make ads with such messages, and conservatives are free to debunk them. Likewise, progressives can debunk misleading statements by conservatives.
ceejayoz 1629 days ago [-]
TV stations have been making these judgement calls for decades. It seems to work fairly well.
'Section 315 of the Federal Communications Act of 1934 states:
"If any licensee shall permit any person who is a legally qualified candidate for any public office to use a broadcasting station, he shall afford equal opportunities to all other such candidates for that office in the use of such broadcasting station: Provided, That such licensee shall have no power of censorship over the material broadcast under the provision of this section."
It also specifically says licensees can’t censor "material broadcast by any such candidate."
Broadcasters are bound by that act and therefore can’t reject a presidential candidate’s ad, even if contains false information. (The candidates do have to abide by disclosure rules to make it clear who paid for the ad.)'
1628 days ago [-]
bhupy 1629 days ago [-]
How is paid speech not free speech? The paid aspect is just a means to an end. Money itself should not be seen as speech, but speech that costs money is still speech. On a basic level, any self publishing on any form of media has a nonzero cost and you buy some service from some third party eventually. If free speech applied to you but not the person who supplied you a platform, then that freedom only exists in theory and is effectively useless as you can be gagged by way of action against who supplied you your megaphone.
The freedom of advocacy is inseparable from the freedom of speech. It costs money to print pamphlets, buy air time, pay people to stand on the corner, conduct opinion polls, etc.
Say that you or I have a novel political idea that we want to advocate for. How do you propose that we do so? We'd probably form a non-profit, spend money contacting potential allies, convince them on the merits of our case and to donate to us, then spend that money on pamphlets, TV, radio ads, etc. That's freedom at work.
If paid advertisements are not free speech, then the concept of free speech would cease to exist beyond street corner rants.
Traster 1629 days ago [-]
We're talking here about free speech versus compelled speech. There are no restrictions on your right to speech, but we also don't compel anyone to sell you an advertising platform. Anyone is free to choose to sell you a megaphone or not. In this case Zuck gets criticism for choosing to sell megaphones to people he knows are going to use those megaphones to lie.
The case Zuck wants to make is that he should be free from the consequences of choosing to take money to distribute lies. He wants to do so by claiming its his obligation to give free speech to politicians but this is clearly rubbish - it's a protection no other megaphone vendor has. Take CNN for example, they can and do refuse to broadcast some political adverts because they have an obligation. An obligation that Zuckerberg contents shouldn't exist. What he is advocating for is a fundamental re-definition of what free speech in the US means.
bhupy 1629 days ago [-]
I think you might be confusing the First Amendment with the principle of Free Speech.
Per the First Amendment, Zuck can do whatever he likes with his platform. He can refuse to broadcast whatever he wants, just like CNN and other news networks. But just as important, he is free to NOT refuse to broadcast whatever he pleases. There are no legal consequences for that (outside of the narrow exceptions in Brandenburg v Ohio).
The argument that he is making is that he wants Facebook to be a platform that upholds the ideal of free speech. Whether or not Facebook follows through and actually practices this philosophy equally, remains to be seen.
Traster 1629 days ago [-]
I'm not confusing the two, there are inherently two parts to this. Because obviously, if you do buy the idea that we're literally just talking about the principle of free speech, then we have literally hundreds of lines of the facebook terms of service that we need to discuss - since those are limits on speech. In fact, the statement he put out on facebook literally says that his company's defence of free speech is not absolute.
The problem is, that it appears that buy buying a facebook advert you're essentially buying the ability for facebook to refuse to scrutinize you. The argument he's actually trying to make is:
>Should we block all political ads? Google, YouTube and most internet platforms run these same ads, most cable networks run these same ads, and of course national broadcasters are required by law to run them by FCC regulations.
But that's a lie. People aren't criticising Facebook for running the same ads that run on CNN. They're criticising facebook for running ads that CNN refuses to run. But instead, he completely fails to engage with the fact that cable networks have a different, coherent policy. Whilst Facebook's policy is that they're both a free speech platform, but also that they spend more money on getting harmful content off their platform than any other company in the world. That's the reason it's confusing - because the criticism of facebook isn't that its adhering to free speech principles, it's that its selectively using free speech as a defence when it suits them.
ben509 1629 days ago [-]
> The case Zuck wants to make is that he should be free from the consequences of choosing to take money to distribute lies.
The "free from consequences" argument is a thin rationalization for political thuggery. You can't make your case intellectually, so you're going to go after people's livelihoods.
r00fus 1629 days ago [-]
Maybe we can call it FaceSpeech. Where the platform owner can decide who gets to talk. It's even better when we don't know who paid or how much.
sjwright 1629 days ago [-]
You're arguing a point nobody is defending. Obviously it costs money to speak loudly. The question is whether political speech can withstand the age of overwhelming scale, extreme anonymity, weaponised psychology and machine learning.
This is a problem far greater than literally anything that could be broadcast in a radio spot. And for now, the photocopiers and push pollers still exist no matter what happens with Facebook.
ben509 1629 days ago [-]
> The question is whether political speech can withstand the age of overwhelming scale, extreme anonymity, weaponised psychology and machine learning.
Except no one has proposed banning bots, machine learning, or shutting down anonymous actors. Those are all boogeymen.
Any paid ad can be required to be transparent to whatever degree we want to impose on the advertiser.
That's why, honestly phrased, this question would be, "will my side continue to stay in power if the other side is allowed to get their message out?"
sjwright 1629 days ago [-]
To be clear, my objection isn't to all online advertising but specifically to Zuckerberg defending Facebook's current policy with an appeal to free speech. It's not for Facebook to protect your rights here.
I don't think any Government should force Facebook's hand; rather they should seek to protect their social license and act independently in their own best long-term interests—as Jack Dorsey recently did for Twitter.
1629 days ago [-]
solinent 1629 days ago [-]
There need to be (and are) reasonable exemptions to free speech, such as hate speech. If someone was targeted in an advertising campaign, and the advertisement threatened to murder them, then it would be certainly illegal. Except there's no way for anyone to police Facebook, and therefore these advertisements could thrive. Facebook's standards for advertisements may not meet the law's standards.
We want free speech, not a lawless society. I hope.
newfriend 1628 days ago [-]
Hate speech doesn't exist in the US, and I hope it never does. We don't need more laws deciding what an individual is allowed to say.
To your point, how is there no way to police threatening messages advertised on facebook? It seems quite easy to figure out who paid for the ad if they are indeed breaking the law with threats.
solinent 1620 days ago [-]
That's just a technicality, a semantic discussion of what hate really is. By the colloquial definition the laws do exist. You can look up the fighting words doctrine. Threats of violence do not fall under hate speech, but are definitely illegal, look up the definition of assault in the US.
tghw 1629 days ago [-]
No one is saying paid speech is not free speech. Obviously it is.
The flawed argument Zuck made is that in order to have free speech we must have paid speech. That's a self-serving fallacy.
There's a difference between paying for printing costs and paying a middle man to distribute your message to an arbitrary number of people, especially when that middle man has zero accountability and zero marginal cost.
bhupy 1629 days ago [-]
It looks like you've misrepresented not one, but two arguments.
> No one is saying paid speech is not free speech.
The parent to whom I was responding said "It's interesting how hard Zuck is working to try and conflate the idea of 'free speech' with paid advertisement", implying that they believe that paid speech is not free speech.
> The flawed argument Zuck made is that in order to have free speech we must have paid speech.
Zuck never said that. From the article, he is quoted as having said: "Ads can be an important part of voice - especially for candidates and advocacy groups the media might not otherwise cover so they can get their message into debates,"
tghw 1628 days ago [-]
You have it backwards. Conflating free speech with paid ads isn't about whether the paid ads are free speech, it's whether paid ads are necessary for free speech. That's an important distinction, and is clearly the argument the OP is making.
Zuck never said it explicitly, but it's strongly implied from his conflation of free speech and paid ads that he thinks paid ads are necessary for the freedom of speech.
That's where the fallacy lies. Paid ads, while being free speech, skew the messages' reach. It's cute that he tries to use a grassroots message as the upside, but it overlooks two massive problems that are pervasive on his platform.
1. The deeper your pockets, the louder your megaphone. It doesn't really matter that the little guys can also buy political ads if the big players can drown them out. In fact, I would say it has the opposite effect than the one he suggests. A grassroots effort with a compelling message can make waves without political advertising, e.g. the Arab Spring. But in an environment where most political messaging is ad-based, a small effort will never have enough resources to compete with a larger foe.
2. There is no accountability in the political ads. In one example, there are at least 10 "different" pages all disseminating the same false messages, coordinated at the same time. Yet Facebook says these are unrelated pages. Being as there is no reporting of who is funding the ads, it's impossible to tell if it is a candidate, a PAC, or a foreign power backing them. And as we've seen, that lack of accountability can be very problematic.
We have a lot of rules about political speech because we have seen over time how it can be abused. Social media did not exist at the time, but now it has more power than any other form of media. Twitter sidestepped the whole issue, and kudos to them for it. Candidates and PACs can still get their messages out, but now it has to be on merit rather than money. Facebook is going the opposite direction, and that's a problem.
ouid 1629 days ago [-]
You're starting with dumb axioms. Free speech is obviously not a self consistent principle in the way that you're talking about it. Unregulated speech with no protection for fair apportionment of the channels of speech is very obviously not free. A silly example, do I have the right to speak exactly out of phase with you so that you can't be heard from some directions? Do I have a right to buy every local news station and have them all report the same thing? Both of these are me restricting your speech with my speech.
Paid advertising is not fundamentally different from these.
fennecfoxen 1629 days ago [-]
"Mr. Paine! I submit that your pamphlet, _Common Sense_, is not free speech! If it was part of your free speech, surely your printers must print my pamphlets despite the fact that I have no money to pay for them." — some colonial judge in the service of the Crown, probably
fennecfoxen 1629 days ago [-]
Postscript:
Hey, if you liked this one, but need a more recent example, you should try getting together with a bunch of people, setting up a little not-for-profit organization[1], soliciting donations, and using that money to make a documentary about your political opponents, decrying them as unfit for public office -- then get in a court case with the FEC telling you that you can't show the movie, because there's going to be an election.
[1] Not a 501(c)(3) charity, mind you; donations aren't tax-deductible. Just a 501(c)(4) not-for-profit.
While Facebook is obviously not bound by the first amendment, the fact that something is paid doesn’t undermine its nature as free speech. Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense,” which sparked the American Revolution, was published and sold for profit. https://www.printmag.com/editors-picks/power-of-print-common.... (Though Paine donated his share to the Continental Army.)
Paine got his message out by contracting with for-profit publishers to disseminate his book. Facebook is just the new version of that.
harryh 1628 days ago [-]
I think there is a pretty clear difference between publishers which sell speech to people that want to buy it and advertisers that take money in return for putting speech in front of people automatically.
Maybe both forms of money entangled speech are worthy of the same protections. But they are two different things.
shawndrost 1628 days ago [-]
As I understand the function of a publisher, it is predominantly about marketing and distribution, and putting a book in front of people who otherwise wouldn't have heard of it or bought it.
harryh 1628 days ago [-]
Yes, but publishers just give people the opportunity to buy something.
Advertisers put the speech in front of people whether they want to buy it or not.
schainks 1628 days ago [-]
"You can be unethical and still be legal that's the way I run my life haha." — Mark Zuckerberg
Free means legally unrestricted by the state here, not free of payment or of private guidelines.
Bostonian 1629 days ago [-]
"It's interesting how hard Zuck is working to try and conflate the idea of 'free speech' with paid advertisements."
My free speech rights include the right to pay for an advertisement to get across my message or to join with others to do so. Progressives dominate the media and academia and want to shut down other outlets.
wavefunction 1629 days ago [-]
>Progressives dominate the media
Don't y'all have Fox News and Sinclair Broadcasting?
gwright 1629 days ago [-]
So you agree that all other media is dominated by progressives and everyone else should just settle Fox News and Sinclair Broadcasting?
wavefunction 1629 days ago [-]
No I don't agree. I am just pointing out that you have outlets available to you. From what I can tell the media is mostly about middle-of-the-road inoffensive capitalism.
jeffdavis 1628 days ago [-]
Free speech is not about the cost. A lot of kinds of speech require some outlay. Censorship is when you are willing to pay the cost, but it's still banned due to content.
Yes, I know we are discussing private censorship which is more acceptable than government censorship. But if FB wants to be considered a general platform, they have to be careful filtering content, including ads.
gojomo 1628 days ago [-]
Paid advertisements are in fact speech covered by US free speech rights. Courts have accepted some limits in purely commercial speech, but political ads tend to receive the same protection as any other utterance, compensated or not.
anm89 1628 days ago [-]
None of this is a free speech issue. Facebook get's to choose whether you can openly speak there specifically because it is outside the realm of free speech and inside the realm of a private business.
Free speech at least in the US is protected by the constitution so if this was a free speech issue it wouldn't be on the table because the answer would be: you can't restrict it.
They want the speech which is best for their business. What else are they, a corporation, supposed to want?
tmaly 1629 days ago [-]
Yes there are dangers of people and companies with big pockets drowning out your voice. Its natural for Zuck to make his case as that is a huge revenue stream for him.
But the same holds true of the general use of public airwaves. If they are owned or controlled by a select group of people who sit on the boards, their voice and preferences are going to be a lot more powerful than your average joe on the street.
snarf21 1629 days ago [-]
I think Facebook is evil but it isn't like TV and radio advertising is held to some high level of fact checking or truth. The one minor thing FB might be able to do is to target smaller groups better than tv channels or radio stations.
OkGoDoIt 1628 days ago [-]
Maybe we’re conflating the meaning of the word free here. Advertising is not free as in beer, but maybe it should still be free as in speech? (ironically labeled in this case)
HugoDaniel 1628 days ago [-]
Lets start an advocacy group that advocates that ads should not be used to spread a political message. We can start by creating a facebook page and buying some ads.
krsdcbl 1629 days ago [-]
I think the comparison is lacking, but you do have a point.
It is really more than awkward to use "free speech" to advocate for something that is, inherently, not free.
tanilama 1628 days ago [-]
What he is saying is that Money needs to find a way to speak.
Nothing new, just some sugar coating of 'We Need That Ads Money, are you kidding me?'
perseusprime11 1628 days ago [-]
It feels like he thinks political advertising on Facebook is the only way to stop Elizabeth Warren.
dominotw 1629 days ago [-]
he didn't say that because of "free speech" , he gave a specific reason for why he thinks they should be allowed. He didn't say its because anyone should be able to say anything.
If his argument was "free speech" he wouldn't have had to support it with "so they can get their message into debates". Why would "free speech" require supporting evidence.
Looks like you are the one doing the conflation :D .
philliphaydon 1629 days ago [-]
Is this a troll comment or are you being serious?
sjwright 1629 days ago [-]
It is self-evidently a reductio ad absurdum, and a well written one at that. It demonstrates the logical flaw in Zuckerberg's argument with one short paragraph.
Derek_MK 1629 days ago [-]
Neither really, it's demonstrating that it's kind of dumb to consider a paid advertisement "speech" for the purposes of "free speech", considering there's inherently a restriction there on how much "speech" you get, because you have to pay for the ability to "speak".
wan23 1629 days ago [-]
Free speech isn't free in the same way that free beer is. The idea is to avoid restricting what messages are allowed as much as possible. It's not about giving any particular individual a platform so much as making sure that the platform is open to a variety of ideas.
sjwright 1629 days ago [-]
A system without restrictions favours the rich, it favours the dishonest, and it favours those who wield the best weaponized psychology. (And it favours most those with all three.) Your passing reference to platforms being open to a "variety of ideas" is—and I'm sorry in advance for the snark—but it's just adorable.
wan23 1628 days ago [-]
While I am in fact adorable, you've misunderstood my comment. It's difficult to talk about Zuckerberg's defense of Facebook's policy without having an accurate definition of the principle of free speech. That isn't to say that unlimited free speech is necessarily good or bad. For example, while many people on HN lean towards holding that principle as an ideal, the community also discourages excessively snarky comments.
ls612 1629 days ago [-]
And a system with restrictions like you want favors the authoritarians, those with the best real world bullying/harassment operations, and those who are well connected.
I’m sorry but liberal democracy isn’t the best form of government because the people are smart (they never have been), it’s the best form of government because the alternative is recurring political violence.
sjwright 1629 days ago [-]
I'm sorry but liberal democracy doesn't infer a strict libertarian view on political campaign messaging.
I don't want to assume you're American, but your fatalistic view of government sure does point towards that. I suggest you spend some time looking at how other liberal democracies handle this challenge. Online political advertising remains a challenge everywhere but usually the same legal and ethical frameworks apply—even if the frameworks still fail at the margins.
And to be clear, my objection isn't to all online advertising but specifically to Zuckerberg defending Facebook's stance by appealing to free speech. I don't think any Government should force Facebook's hand; I think they should seek to protect their social license and act independently as Jack Dorsey recently did.
ls612 1629 days ago [-]
So far as I can tell most other liberal democracies either handle the issue much the same way as the US does or they just flat out ban political parties that are too “fringe”.
I wouldn’t trust anyone who wanted to be the censor to be the censor.
sjwright 1629 days ago [-]
Few countries are like the USA if you’re willing to look close enough. The differences are there even if they don’t scream out at you.
darkarmani 1629 days ago [-]
That's part of the point of being rich. Most systems favor people with more money and smarter messaging.
ben_w 1629 days ago [-]
There is always a restriction. The platform isn’t open to a variety of ideas but to the biggest spender.
Separately, while some politics revolves around untestable statements of preference (e.g. Purple team “freedom is more important than equality” vs. Teal team “equality is the best foundation upon which freedom can be built”), there are also statements of fact and it is dangerous to allow demonstrably false claims to spread (Antivaxxers are probably the least controversial example of a dangerously wrong meme on this forum, but others exist all the way back to ancient Greek democracy).
Democracy isn’t Magic: If Antivaxxers got 99.9% of the votes they would still be wrong, the only difference is they would cause more harm.
yifanl 1629 days ago [-]
That implicitly means it's biased towards the status quo.
joejerryronnie 1629 days ago [-]
I am staunchly opposed to all the “free” offerings of our more progressive presidential candidates - free healthcare, free college, etc - but free beer could sway my vote.
maxerickson 1629 days ago [-]
"Free" as in "from prior restraint by the government".
It's not a coherent comment in the context of the US 1st amendment.
DavidSJ 1629 days ago [-]
Free speech, as a value, is a broader concept than mere lack of government restraint on speech. It can also pertain to the exchange of ideas in certain private forums.
And by the way, the First Amendment disallows not only prior restraint, but many other government restraints on speech as well. It's just that prior restraint is considered the most egregious and hence subject to the greatest judicial scrutiny.
k__ 1629 days ago [-]
Why should this be trolling?
cj 1629 days ago [-]
Are political ads labeled / presented any differently than regular ads on Facebook?
The main issue I have with this is how Facebook strategically blends advertisements (which is often political during election cycles) together with organic non-sponsored content.
Anecdote: My 84 year old grandmother spends 1-2 hours per day scrolling through Facebook's news feed. When I watch her do it, she pays ZERO attention to why she's seeing a specific piece of content (to her, there's no difference between a post that's labeled "Sponsored" versus an organic post from a family member). In other words, for my grandmother, Facebook has not done an effective job at informing her when she's viewing a paid advertisement vs. organic non-sponsored content. This is a clear form of user manipulation that needs to stop.
Even when I scroll through Facebook, I often don't notice the "Sponsored" label on posts until after I've already read most of the post.
To me, the primary issue is that Facebook does not adequately differentiate organic content from sponsored content.
At least when watching television, it's absolutely clear when you're watching paid-for commercials - it's harder to manipulate someone's beliefs when they know they're watching a commercial. But with Facebook, a huge percentage of users don't know when they're interacting with an advertisement vs. organic content - this is the problem that I think needs solving.
> Zuck: "Instead, I believe the better approach is to work to increase transparency. Ads on Facebook are already more transparent than anywhere else."
In what way is Facebook transparent? Do they mean they simply disclose political ad spend? Or do they legitimately think they're doing a good job at properly labeling paid-for content?
bryan_w 1628 days ago [-]
> Are political ads labeled / presented any differently than regular ads on Facebook?
Yes. It has a "Paid for by ____" header in addition to the sponsored designation
shaftway 1628 days ago [-]
Yeah, but it's never "Paid for by Oil Companies Trying to Pollute the Environment". It's always some meaningless name that serves the underlying cause, like "Paid for by Citizens Concerned About Jobs"
xmprt 1628 days ago [-]
That's a broader issue with PACs and whether lobbying of this form should be allowed.
xmprt 1628 days ago [-]
I now understand how to differentiate between the two but how would anyone in the right mind think that the average person would realize that "Paid for by" implies it's political. At least when they say it in TV ads, it's very clearly a political ad based on the abundance of context clues.
nbanks 1629 days ago [-]
This isn't a new phenomenon. I've also read magazines with advertisements disguised as articles, except for the small "advertisement" label at the top.
cj 1628 days ago [-]
I agree it’s not a new phenomenon that people in advertising have tried to sneak in advertisements without people noticing.
The reason it’s different with Facebook (even though it’s been going on in Magazines forever) is the scale of it. Magazines are ubiquitous but the average American does not spend 1-3 hours per day on reading magazines (minutes at most). But Facebook... it’s at a whole other level in terms of the magnitude of people reached and the magnitude of attention being captured.
What might not matter in Magazines May very well matter for Facebook based on the scale of the impact.
jcranberry 1628 days ago [-]
I don't paid for articles necessarily have to be labeled.
PAGAN_WIZARD 1628 days ago [-]
>At least when watching television, it's absolutely clear when you're watching paid-for commercials
That is not true, product placement can be very subtle and even when it's not, it's not like the actors look at the camera and say "This show brought to you by X" even when it really is.
hellllllllooo 1628 days ago [-]
Political advertising is very clear on television. Isn't that the context of this discussion?
WhompingWindows 1629 days ago [-]
Why can't FB charge a minimal subscription fee? For 2-3 bucks a year, wouldn't they keep the vast majority of users and simultaneously remove their dependence on shadowy advertisement dollars?
yourself92 1629 days ago [-]
Because they've determined they can make more money by not doing that
knzhou 1629 days ago [-]
Because in practice a negligible fraction of people is willing to pay even a nominal fee for something they think they can get for free. Just a few days ago we had an article full of outrage that Google asked people to pay a small fee once their extremely generous Gmail storage filled up, because they were used to thinking email was free.
ankit219 1629 days ago [-]
I did a back of the paper calculation as to how much fb would earn via me as a user. I noticed a user like me spends about 15 mins a day on facebook and see around 6 sponsored posts. Internally FB ads are all CPM based, at about $4-5 per CPM, no matter the optimization advertisers choose. In a year he would have seen about 2000 impressions, and hence minimum price would be around $10 per year. (There are many users who spends a lot more time and hence the revenue multiple will be higher)
But there is more revenue than just that. FB allows advertisers to reach specific audiences, and even create lookalikes, so overall, there will be a %age of the users seeing more ads than me, potentially personalized for them, and average revenue per user would be higher.
s1artibartfast 1628 days ago [-]
I think your numbers are pretty far off if you look at Facebook financial statements, and a more accurate cost would be around $200/yr for a daily user [1]. US & Canada had 189 million daily users and a quarterly Ad revenue of 8.487 Billion dollars. That is $45 per user per quarter.
You might be right. I was replying to the parent comment which said facebook should have a ad free subscription product at $2-3 per year. Just tried to say that the Revenue per user is more than that.
Also, the numbers you posted include all the inventory - facebook news feed, ads on the side right on desktop, instagram, messenger ads, stories ads, instant articles, and even the ad network. According to facebook (read somewhere) 70% of their ads are on the ad network.
whiddershins 1629 days ago [-]
The people who would pay it are the exact same people who are worth the most to advertise to.
This is why you can’t pay to get a version of The NY Times that has no ads.
greenshackle2 1628 days ago [-]
And yet I can pay to not see ads on Youtube and Twitch. Is there something different about video vs written content?
BetaDeltaAlpha 1628 days ago [-]
I don't know about twitch, but YouTube hemorrhages money and couldn't exist independently of Alphabet.
nidificate 1628 days ago [-]
Facebook makes more than $5 per user but the average is brought down by lower revenue in Asia/Pacific. For users in US/Canada the revenue per user is over $20.
Their average revenue per active user faaaaar exceeds $2-3/yr in the US at least.
scottmf 1629 days ago [-]
Because they make more money from ads than they could charge users to remove ads
qroshan 1629 days ago [-]
ha ha, classic arm-chair expert who has run ZERO business in their lives.
pengstrom 1629 days ago [-]
Now that's just rude and uncalled for. Why not write a few lines and explain why you think he's wrong?
sidr 1629 days ago [-]
Because price stickiness is real, and the stickiness at free is very very strong. Being a service whose appeal derives entirely from the network effect, they will never ever give their users an exogenous push to leave the platform.
knzhou 1629 days ago [-]
> To me, the primary issue is that Facebook does not adequately differentiate organic content from sponsored content.
This is a classic isolated demand for rigor. “Sponsored” is exactly as prominent on Facebook as “op-ed” is on newspapers and “advertisement” is on whole sponsored segments of magazines. In all cases that word is there at the top in a normal font. What else are they supposed to do, make it flashing and rainbow colored? Why not complain about newspapers not doing that?
dominostars 1629 days ago [-]
The content on Facebook is intentionally made to look like a post from your friend. Advertising in newspapers was always clearly differentiated or even sectioned off.
knzhou 1629 days ago [-]
No it doesn't. In both Facebook and in newspapers there are a few words at the top. Sure, this can be misunderstood or go unnoticed, but it does in both cases.
dominostars 1629 days ago [-]
Can you give examples of newspaper ads that are made to look like just another article on the same page?
mszkoda 1628 days ago [-]
I work in the publishing industry; we publish several industry trade magazines.
We often get sponsored articles that are labeled specifically as ads and are created to look exactly like any other article in our magazines. Most of the time they are extremely clear to the reader based simply on the content compared to other articles, but they are also marked directly as advertisements on the page... though not in a super obvious way.
knzhou 1629 days ago [-]
This is not a new or rare phenomenon. I noticed it many times when growing up.
I just watched The Great Hack, which I can't say is fantastic as a whole, but does still raise some terrifying points of the power of targeted political ads and how they are being weaponized. I really don't see any other choice but to ban political ads entirely as Twitter is doing.
But basically, a political campaign was started around NOT voting as a form of protest. And those were targeted to the opposing party etc..
It is one thing if political ads were just about informing the public about a candidate, but we are far past that. This is a question about the legitimacy of our democracy now.
Anybody have any bright ideas on how to apply pressure on Facebook to do the same as Twitter? This feels to me like one of the more important questions of our (immediate) time since it effects absolutely everything.
nicpottier 1629 days ago [-]
That's a long link, so the part in question. Note this is from a taped pitch from the president of Cambridge Analytica, this isn't hearsay, it is from the horse's mouth:
> Nix moved on to pitch his next case study – a youth mobilisation campaign. Again, all is not as it seems. “Trinidad is a very interesting case history of how we look at problems,” Nix said. “Trinidad's tiny – it's 1.3 million people – but almost exactly half the country are Indian and half the country are Black, Afro-Caribbean. And there are two main political parties, one for the Blacks and one for the Indians… when the Indians are in power the Blacks don't get anything, and vice-versa, you know – they screw each other. So we were working, I think for the third time in Trinidad, and we were working for the Indians, and we did a huge amount for research, and two really important things came out.
> “One was that all the youth, Indian and Afro-Caribbean, felt disenfranchised … And secondly, amongst the Indians the familial hierarchies were really strong. There was huge respect for their elders and their parents and their families, but not so for the Afro-Caribbeans. And that was enough information to inform the entire campaign.
> “We went to the client and said, we only want to do one thing, we want to run a campaign where we target the youth – all youth, all the Blacks and all the Indians – and we try and increase apathy. And they didn't really understand why… but they allowed us to do this campaign, and the campaign had to be non-political, because no one, the kids don’t care about politics. It had to be reactive, because they’re lazy; inclusive of all ethnicities; bottom-up. It had to be exciting, because kids want to do something fun.
> “We came up with this campaign which was all about ‘Be part of the gang, do something cool, be part of a movement.’ And it was called the ‘Do So’ campaign… A3 posters. And graffiti, yellow paint, you know, we cut stencils with the jigsaw… And we'd give these to kids, and they'd get in their cars at night, you know, just make a drawing, get in the car, and race around the country putting up these posters and getting chased by the police and all their friends were doing it, and it was fucking brilliant fun…
> “Do So. Don't vote. Don't be involved in politics. It's like a sign of resistance against – not government, against politics. And voting. And very soon they're making their own YouTube videos. This is the prime minister’s house that's being graffitied! … It was carnage.
> “And the reason why this was such a good strategy is because we knew, and we really really knew, that when it came to voting, all the Afro-Caribbean kids wouldn't vote, because they ‘Do So’. But all the Indian kids would do what their parents told them to do, which is go out and vote. And so all the Indians went out and voted, and the difference on the 18-35-year-old turnout is like 40%, and that swung the election by about 6% – which is all we needed!”
knzhou 1629 days ago [-]
You have to keep in mind that you're not listening to a journalistic expose of the Trinidad election -- you are listening to a sales pitch from Cambridge Analytica, which has all the motivation to vastly exaggerate their influence. I've been unable to find any reference to this "Do So" campaign anywhere except for Cambridge Analytica bragging about it. Furthermore as described this was an old-fashioned campaign, which had more to do with physical materials handed out than social media ads.
The same caveats went for all the "psychological targeting" they bragged about a few years ago; there is precious little evidence that it is better than targeting roughly by political party, which we've had for decades. For its power, we only have their word to go on.
nicpottier 1629 days ago [-]
I would say the burden of truth is on you, not me. We have it from them that they did this, the documentary does indeed have images from the campaign. Just because there isn't a ton of internet content you can search from your seat doesn't mean it didn't happen.
Yes, this was primarily a physical campaign, but it drives home the point of how these people work. And how they DID work in 2016 as well with respect to targeted advertising on Facebook.
Watch the movie if you haven't, this stuff was well researched by various reporters. It isn't perfect but it certainly shows that what we have now is not tenable if we want to maintain a democracy.
chrischen 1629 days ago [-]
> "Ads can be an important part of voice - especially for candidates and advocacy groups the media might not otherwise cover so they can get their message into debates," he added.
Another tool in the arsenal of the rich and powerful to give them more of a voice than the average person, is another way to look at it.
Facebook are profiting from both sides. They’re a news site that’s simultaneously FOX News and MSNBC all at once. But I still have to agree with Zuckerberg on this: enforcing misinformation shouldn’t be left to a private company.
freddie_mercury 1629 days ago [-]
But a private company should enforce all the other things that Facebook has no problem moderating?
Facebook has already said they have no problem enforcing this for non-politicians, after all.
chrischen 1629 days ago [-]
They shouldn’t be enforcing most other content either, including nipples. Nipples are like Muslim face veils of the Western world.
GordonS 1629 days ago [-]
Not all of the western world; IME the USA is much more prudish about nudity than Europe, for example.
WhompingWindows 1629 days ago [-]
Wouldn't all of this FB BS be solved if he just asks users to pay $3 a year (or .50 for developing nations), and then removing ads/sponsorship entirely? That'd be billions per year and they'd not face all these charges of political shenanigans, poisoning the democracy, etc.
I doubt few of the FB users I know wouldn't part with $3 in exchange for their network/contacts that FB provides.
cj 1629 days ago [-]
$3 isn't enough. It would need to be well above $30/yr.
Average revenue per user in the US/Canada is $26.76 [0] per user per year. Globally, the average is over $6.
I'd wager a bet that the ARPU for users willing to pay $30/yr for no ads is even greater than $27 - likely above $100 - because the only people who would pay extra to remove ads are people with disposable income (which are usually the exact people advertisers want to target when trying to sell stuff).
A more accurate cost would be around $200/yr for a daily user [1]. US & Canada had 189 million daily users and a quarterly Ad revenue of 8.487 Billion dollars. That is $45 per user per quarter.
[1] https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2019/q3....
1629 days ago [-]
chrischen 1629 days ago [-]
Charging upfront and knowing exactly what something will cost you for what you get is Apple’s business model, not Google/Facebook where they wave free things in your face to distract you while the other arm reaches around to your back pocket.
You may balk at Apple’s high prices but at least you’ve chosen not to pay.
mrgreenfur 1629 days ago [-]
That is against the business model of building a ubiquitous profile on every one and selling that for ad targeting. This way he can sell each person over and over instead of making a measly $3.
ff317 1629 days ago [-]
Yeah but there's still a point to be made here. Maybe the amount is closer to $10/month instead of $3/year, which is still pretty cheap considering the social utility and "entertainment" hours people are getting out of the service.
Also, maybe the costs of running facebook's infrastructure and code drop (and employee headcount, etc) off dramatically if they take an axe to all the parts of it that are devoted to advertising and user data tracking/sales and just focus on the useful core tech bits, which also helps increase the profit margin on the new income model. It's possible there's a rational price that the masses would pay that would still turn them a profit under this kind of setup.
nidificate 1628 days ago [-]
How many people would be willing to pay $10/month for something that they currently get for free?
1629 days ago [-]
notSupplied 1628 days ago [-]
Network effects are the reason. If they charged for it, a chunk of users will leave, causing network to be less useful for the remaining users who were willing to pay, which then causes more users to leave, etc etc.
landryraccoon 1629 days ago [-]
You're underestimating Facebook's revenue by an order of magnitude.
If they charged $3 per month they would be making less money than they are now, even if nobody quit because it's no longer free.
triceratops 1628 days ago [-]
They'd just be replaced by another company that offers the same stuff as FB for free.
seagull 1628 days ago [-]
> Another tool in the arsenal of the rich and powerful to give them more of a voice than the average person, is another way to look at it.
The rich and powerful already have exponentially more of a voice than the average person -- media corporations are privately owned, after all, and no one is suggesting that we prevent them from making political statements. Banning political advertising is basically saying that people or groups with thousands or millions of dollars to spend shouldn't be able to get their message out -- only billionaires should be able to do that.
cabaalis 1629 days ago [-]
The primary problem is that it's not illegal for politicians to lie to the electorate. Without solving that problem, we will always have sub-par leadership and questions about what is or is not a valid advertisement.
In official capacity (under oath) it's illegal for us to lie to them. In their official capacity (under oath of office) they get to lie all day long, straight through their teeth. CEOs can't defraud their shareholders, but politicians can do so every day of their lives.
mattnewton 1628 days ago [-]
It's not illegal to lie but it is required to attribute that lie to the political campaign making it per the FEC's attribution rules, and the hope is that people will be able to spot lies and call them out. IANAL but this is the general idea as I understand it.
To me, the problem is these kinds of sponsored posts undermine that by not enforcing the attribution, by being more ephemeral than TV or print ads, and by allowing specific enough targeting to exclude anyone who might call it out.
tomohawk 1628 days ago [-]
Members of Congress, while in Congress, can literally say anything they want to with complete immunity.
nidificate 1628 days ago [-]
Often times in politics, what is a "lie" is more a matter of opinion rather than fact. Who gets to be the arbiter of truth?
ep103 1628 days ago [-]
If only we had some sort of system, where individuals could be sued for making damaging statements. Maybe each side could present their case, and a jury of their peers could be the ultimate deciders.
Aperocky 1628 days ago [-]
That system certainly doesn't sound like facebook to me.
colejohnson66 1628 days ago [-]
In theory, the electorate. They vote out politicians who lie. In practice, people don’t seem to care.
readams 1629 days ago [-]
We simultaneously fear the power of Facebook but then demand they become the final arbiter of the truth, censoring even the speech of our political leaders.
Why did we think this was a good idea again? Ask China their opinion on the value of being the one to decide what is true.
jonbronson 1629 days ago [-]
Demanding even the slightest level of accountability for blatantly misleading or false information does not make them the final arbiter. It's not a binary choice of absolute determination vs completely hands off.
boreas 1629 days ago [-]
There are many choices in the policy space, but the decision about how to treat an individual advertisement is essentially binary. The line between truth and falsehood must lie somewhere, and I can guarantee you that different political factions will have very different ideas about what should lie on either side of that line.
gandutraveler 1628 days ago [-]
The question is how do you define false information. Do we rely on consensus ?
For e.g. let's say majority of the world population believe that earth is flat. In that case, will that still be false information?
Even if we go with consensus, it's such a difficult problem to solve in this age of internet where new content is created at such a rapid pace.
hos234 1629 days ago [-]
Our leaders (and groups that prop them up) have never had the ability to scale their propaganda and target people as they do today.
They need to stop braying about turning into China and admit that this a new ball game. That needs new rules.
diogenescynic 1629 days ago [-]
I think most people just think Facebook ads should be held to same as older media like newspapers and tv that have to have an editor review the ad and approve it before it can be published. Facebook is being used as a disinformation platform and Zuckerberg thinks it’s more important to keep making money. I don’t think that trade off is worth what it’s doing to society. I think Facebook has a large share of the blame for making political discourse worse.
sitkack 1629 days ago [-]
Its akin to having a nation-wide mini mart chain knowingly structure their inventory to help children buy cigarettes. They know it is happening and it is wrong, but they make money doing it so they will drag their heals (CVS pun) for as long as possible.
This is the kinda thing corps get fined billions of dollars for.
samastur 1629 days ago [-]
How is not selling something to anyone censoring them?
CharlesColeman 1629 days ago [-]
> We simultaneously fear the power of Facebook but then demand they become the final arbiter of the truth, censoring even the speech of our political leaders.
They won't be any kind of "arbiter of truth" if they just decide to refuse to carry all political ads, like Twitter has decided to do.
I think that it's quite possible that a total laissez faire attitude towards quantity of paid speech may be incompatible with democracy, in the context of disinformation campaigns and massive wealth inequality, etc. Free speech without democracy is pointless. These issues may require some adjustment to our social contracts.
readams 1629 days ago [-]
You believe that all political advertising of all kinds should be simply banned?
colejohnson66 1628 days ago [-]
I personally do, but I also recognize that that may be at odds with the First Amendment.
However, political ads aren’t usually just any kind of ad; They are almost always using scare tactics, or sometimes, just flat out lying. Stuff that would be illegal for a regular ad to do can sometimes be done simply because it’s a political ad.
Besides, who’s going to enforce the accuracy of the ads? We’ve seen many times that the government cannot hold itself accountable, so why would they do it for political ads.
CharlesColeman 1629 days ago [-]
> You believe that all political advertising of all kinds should be simply banned?
I clearly said no such thing. I merely pointed out that 1) Facebook can respond to these problems without doing any (private) viewpoint censorship and 2) we as a society may need to adjust the parameters around paid speech to protect democracy. Most things aren't black and white, and the choice isn't a binary one between extremes like laissez faire and total bans.
hinkley 1628 days ago [-]
Because the story arc goes like this:
1) people notice someone has gotten power
2) people notice the person is being shitty about it
3) people insist that responsibility and power go hand in hand
4) person does not rise to the challenge
5) people take the power away
Making them accountable is the warning shot. Next step is divestiture.
kevinsundar 1628 days ago [-]
How does requiring facebook to fact-check (fact according to who?) take their power away? It just gives them more power.
hinkley 1628 days ago [-]
Because that's been the social contract for hundreds or thousands of years, and we know they'll probably fuck it up anyway.
The question is will they percolate to the top of the priority list? Small time offenders often get away with it.
[edit:] if you ask me, which you kinda did, I think we're using a self-organizing system, where people self-select into active positions in society and then we cull the worst actors - if we can - before they get too powerful. We get enough pleasant surprises out of this arrangement that we tolerate the bad ones. Trying to plan this stuff out ahead of time? You get a boring dystopia or a scary dystopia.
kevinsundar 1628 days ago [-]
I really do want to hear what your opinion on this is but I'm having trouble following. I am of the opinion that letting facebook fact-check anything, let alone political speech, inherently lets them (or well a random low paid "fact-checker" reviewing ads somewhere) control what a huge mass of people see. Isn't that a ton of power?
quarkral 1629 days ago [-]
When we're talking about whether Facebook should be fact-checking the lies of public servants, we're missing the point. We shouldn't be having public servants that are lying to us in the first place. By the way this isn't just referring to one political party, the other party lies or blatantly dodges around truths as well. I think our government is in much deeper shit than the tech industry is, and even though I agree Facebook needs some regulation, I wouldn't trust the government to do it.
james-mcelwain 1629 days ago [-]
You're acting as if we can't do anything about power of Facebook. It's absurd to to conflate making Facebook take editorial control of their platform with making it the state censor of an authoritarian country.
Regulating and/or breaking up Facebook is hardly "demanding they become the final arbiter of truth." The goal here is reducing Mark Zuckerberg to the point where his personal judgement is irrelevant.
petewailes 1629 days ago [-]
It's censoring advertising (or it would be if they did it), not speech.
That's not even remotely the same.
colejohnson66 1628 days ago [-]
Technically, they are kindof the same. The Supreme Court has ruled that commercial speech (of which advertising is a part of) has Constitutional protection.[0][1]
With very hefty caveats. It's not a blanket protection
samatman 1629 days ago [-]
Facebook, the platform, is in trouble.
It doesn't matter what the outcome is of the 2020 election season, or what Facebook does during it. They will be blamed for it.
Buying Instagram and Whatsapp was farsighted, Facebook the company can cruise for awhile on those properties. The main site is bound to fall out of fashion, and soon.
Can't be soon enough for my taste.
dcchambers 1629 days ago [-]
Sadly many groups I am a part of have moved to facebook and have no interest in moving off of the platform.
To be honest I think it's pretty terrible as a group platform. No proper discussion threads and it's hard to find stuff. But people don't have to pay to host a website/forum and there's virtually no barrier to join since most people have an account on facebook.com.
The only reason I still use facebook is for these groups.
geerlingguy 1629 days ago [-]
I've also found that my kids' school sometimes _only_ sends out notifications or surveys via Facebook, even though they have two other specific systems they pay for that are specifically made for parent/school communications.
inscionent 1629 days ago [-]
A pubic school? This sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen.
orky56 1629 days ago [-]
Go on. How so?
atonse 1628 days ago [-]
The most obvious one to me is violations of FERPA rules and posting private information/pictures of my kids in a public forum.
frankacter 1628 days ago [-]
1) OP stated they were "notifications and polls", neither of which would contain private information or pictures.
2) You make the assumption that the school does not have a private / protected group that is used for verifying group members and protecting content from non-members.
atonse 1627 days ago [-]
I do make that assumption because your average staff member that would manage something like that, would do the easy path of default settings (which are probably public).
nicpottier 1629 days ago [-]
Agreed on all counts. It is the only reason I go to Facebook.
As you said the irony is that it is worse in almost every way except sign up friction. The content isn't even being spidered in any way by Google or the like so discovering the content in these groups later is also nigh impossible.
Just a travesty.
dcchambers 1629 days ago [-]
> The content isn't even being spidered in any way by Google or the like so discovering the content in these groups later is also nigh impossible.
This is huge too. It's so hard to archive the data on these closed platforms - especially if you need an account ot view the data. There's a massive loss of knowledge when these platforms inevitably shutter.
jecke8888888 1629 days ago [-]
I think this may be why some groups use it. I have involved myself in many online business groups (real estate, mlm, etc) and they have a good reason to use facebook groups. They are very easy to control what voices are heard. For example to submit a post to one group which you have to pay +$2500 to enter every post has to be approved by the administrator before it's visible.
bluetidepro 1629 days ago [-]
> The main site is bound to fall out of fashion, and soon.
Uhhh, that already happened many years ago. Talk to anyone under 30, and Facebook is VERY out of style/out-of-date. They will most likely laugh at you or think you're being ironic if you were to bring up "hanging out on Facebook" or anything like that.
frankacter 1628 days ago [-]
While I've certainly heard that statement made, the publicly stated demographic statistics do not support it.
As of July 2019, 13 - 24 year olds make up 31.9% of Facebook's overall userbase. Another 32% make up the 25-34 age range.
Compare that to some of the other platform's 13-24 demographic:
Twitter 39%, Instagram 37.3%, Snap Chat 58.5%
While Snapchat has a slightly younger audience, they also only have 210 million active users, a 13% increase from previous year. Facebook on the other hand has 2.45 billion active users, a 9% increase from previous year.
edmundsauto 1628 days ago [-]
Sounds like they will be in trouble in 50 years when their current userbase is dead.
thosakwe 1629 days ago [-]
As far I can tell, this is only really the attitude in the Western world. Most of my relatives live in Nigeria, and all of them use Facebook a lot.
And at that, there are still many people in the US who mainly use Facebook, especially Gen X and older, so I always question if there are as many people on this train as it often seems like.
samatman 1629 days ago [-]
I don't think Facebook would be happy to lose all their high-value customers and keep the ones in markets where they don't make as much money.
As for "Gen X and older", when your youngest customers are pushing 40, that's the kiss of death.
I agree with all sibling comments that claim that Facebook is already out of fashion; I'm suggesting that this will get worse, rapidly.
Suggesting? Ok, hoping.
WhompingWindows 1629 days ago [-]
I wish this were true...I'm the only one in my tech-literate family of 25+ who doesn't have an account. They think I'm weird and all asked why I'm not on FB, it's inconvenient for them to email me. Really? You can't email me? Come on.
dyslexit 1629 days ago [-]
> Facebook, the platform, is in trouble.
Sadly this isn't true at all. They've been posting record profits and growth all year. Just yesterday they posted their third quarter results, where their sales rose 29% and user base increased by 35 million, including by 3 million in North America [0], despite negative news surrounding them all year. Most people simply don't care, or care enough to actually delete their accounts over these things.
I'd wager that it already is falling out of fashion, at least among young people (say 30 and under).
LanceH 1629 days ago [-]
I've been curious about this. It makes sense that students might use something else. They are all right there in one place. What happens as everyone leaves school, scatters and joins a lot of different groups? They seem to end up on facebook even if it's only because those groups already existed.
JKCalhoun 1629 days ago [-]
Agree but for the comment about buying Instagram and Whatsapp being farsighted. I think it practically guarantees they'll be broken up.
scottlocklin 1629 days ago [-]
It's a funny dynamic; the left is having an all hands freak out over FB (who I intensely dislike also) because right wing dorks like Ben Shapiro are the most frequently shared memes on their platform. Basically because FB is a bunch of old people, and old people like right wing memes and Ben Shapiro.
Zuck's a smart guy, and there are other smart people working there; I'm sure they realize this, but they can't actually say it to the AOCs of the world for fear of freaking out shareholders and advertisers.
FillardMillmore 1629 days ago [-]
Regardless of the political motivations that precluded all this controversy, I'm happy with the end-result - someone should be holding Zuck's feet to the fire. It's been too long that Zuck's got to play in the playground without supervision.
dtwest 1629 days ago [-]
Most people saw what Twitter did and thought, Facebook is probably under some pressure to do the same.
Mark Zuckerburg saw it and thought, we now have a monopoly on social media based political advertising! $$$
quarkral 1629 days ago [-]
I don't think Twitter actually hade much political advertising at all before tbh. It's like Bing traffic compared to Google.
alwayseasy 1628 days ago [-]
Under $3M per quarter according to their CFO.
haolez 1629 days ago [-]
I think Zuck's statement makes more sense than Jack's, where Jack said that "democracy might break if we allow those ads" (not with these exact words). It's weird to see a CEO making a statement like that, like if it was his role to protect democracy. I think Zuck sounded more professional and centered in this case.
sp332 1629 days ago [-]
Isn't it his/our/everyone's role to protect democracy? What's wrong with that idea?
WhompingWindows 1629 days ago [-]
How is it NOT his role to protect democracy? Democracy thrives on freedom of information, and with an informed populace. If the democracy's populace is gaining massive quantities of information from Twitter, isn't Jack Dorsey then directly involved in being an arbiter of democracy? For better or worse, isn't it factually true that these tech-info companies are directly woven into the fabric of our democracy?
haolez 1629 days ago [-]
I was just talking about their statements, but regarding the argument, isn't this an arrogant position to take? You are basically saying that the majority of the population is not smart enough to detect fake news by themselves, and that a smaller group of smart individuals (you included) are better poised to protect "the people" and control what they should and should not be exposed to.
Sounds a little dystopian and authoritarian to me as well. Fair democracy is hard.
sp332 1628 days ago [-]
There's a difference between arrogance and actually having a lot of power. Zuckerberg is dodging accountability and pretending FB isn't responsible for the ads it's running. And it doesn't have to be a majority - the last election was decided by a margin of 0.09% of all votes cast, and ad platforms let advertisers target people pretty finely.
haolez 1628 days ago [-]
What's your proposed solution?
sp332 1628 days ago [-]
My ideal would be for some external regulator to police political ads, like the FEC already does to some extent. The policies would be made in public. The regulator would work with advertising platforms to set and enforce guidelines.
Another option which would avoid some of the problems is to limit how tightly a political ad could be targeted. If misinformation is included in an ad, everyone should be able to see it and make a judgement. Targeting the most vulnerable people would not be an option.
I think if a platform doesn't know whether an ad is true or not - any kind of ad - they should be very hesitant to run the ad. I think Twitter's decision to just not run political ads makes sense because it's hard for a private company to make policies in public. Even if they are really careful, there will always be some suspicion that they are favoring the highest bidder or Jack's favorite.
haolez 1628 days ago [-]
I mostly agree. Twitter is a private company and is free to do what they want. What I don’t agree is the CEO making the argument that he is protecting democracy. He is protecting his business.
I strongly agree that adding more information to the system (like making ads metadata open) is good for the society as a whole and might lead to better decisions, as in decisions supported by better data.
I don’t agree with the regulator idea, though. How do we make this regulator strong enough to resist corruption? It’s a tough job.
_jal 1629 days ago [-]
The Zuckerbot is a functioning profit-maximizer, if that's what you mean.
haolez 1629 days ago [-]
I was referring to their statements. I think Jack might have omitted the part about democracy. Just announce the change and be done with it.
tathougies 1629 days ago [-]
Why is his policy so diffficult for people to swallow? He has made a standard rule without room for arbitrary censorship and everyone is upset. If you can pay, you can publish on Facebook. This is a good thing. Fairness is important when it comes to monopolies offering services.
danans 1628 days ago [-]
> If you can pay, you can publish on Facebook
That's not true for Facebook or any other advertising platform. These platforms have entire sets of policies on what ads they will or will not run. Some restrictions are legally mandated, while others are based their own internal standards (i.e. they won't run blatantly racist ads even though they aren't technically illegal).
The decision to run political ads regardless of whether they contain lies is a specific choice they are making, not something that emerges from a universal principle of access to paid advertising.
And it's Mr. Zuckerberg's right to choose that route, as CEO of his company. But it doesn't absolve him of criticism for making the decision the way he did, whether from Mr. Dorsey, or a random nobody on this forum.
colejohnson66 1628 days ago [-]
People are upset because he’s allowing ads that flat out lie simply because they’re a political ad. If the some Democratic nominee put out an ad saying “Trump reverses decision to ban LGBTQ+ from the military,” despite it being blatantly false (there’s no gray truth in that), they would allow it.
This rule means I could go form a PAC and post a ridiculous ad like “Voting for Biden will give you AIDS.” That has no basis in reality, yet from Zuckerberg’s words, it sounds like they would allow it.
tathougies 1628 days ago [-]
Good! That's fantastic. Some people believe those things. It's not just your voice and those of people like you that should be heard in a democracy. No one in any country has sole authority to determine 'fact'. If they did, we should just appoint them to be king, call them 'god', and be done with the whole government thing.
colejohnson66 1627 days ago [-]
The courts have already upheld the FTC’s authority many times in regards to false and deceptive advertising. I can’t legally make an ad that says “Vaccines cause autism; Buy homeopathic natural remedies!” Why is political advertising any different? Because then someone is the arbitrator of truth? The FTC does that already, just not with politics.
bhupy 1629 days ago [-]
The freedom of advocacy is inseparable from the freedom of speech. It costs money to print pamphlets, buy air time, pay people to stand on the corner, conduct opinion polls, etc.
Every political movement in history has consisted of forming groups, contacting potential allies, soliciting donations from them, then spending that money on pamphlets, TV, radio ads, etc. That's freedom at work. The medium has now shifted away from pamphlets, TV, and radio, towards the Internet and social media.
If paid advertisements are not free speech, then the concept of free speech would cease to exist beyond street corner rants.
orky56 1629 days ago [-]
With income inequality rising, the revolving door between public/private sector, and lobbying, the power of the citizenry compared to the wealthy individuals is becoming smaller. An individual can make a single post and get a single like that is shown within a closed network while a dollar can do the same on these networks. The only place left for a citizen to make a difference is at the voting booth with their one powerful vote. However the influence on that voter is guided through means the voter is not aware of.
SolaceQuantum 1629 days ago [-]
I'm mostly confused as to what sorts of free speech is being violated by not using ads? Parties can post on their facebook pages and comment the same way users can. Isn't that equal speech? What's the dimension I'm missing?
orky56 1629 days ago [-]
Through ads, political parties don't necessarily have to use true statements. In addition, they can target specific groups of users based on demographics and other attributes Facebook provides. The issue is that regular users who post have a higher burden of truth than someone who pays to play as a political figure.
mattnewton 1629 days ago [-]
It’s even worse than non-sponsored content competing with sponsored content IMO. These sponsored posts do not have any controls I am aware of to prevent them from running afoul of the FEC’s rules on attribution. Meaning, I can set up a new account and start paying for political ads against my opponent that are not traceable back to the candidate I work for. And worse, because of targeting controls and the ephemeral nature of the Facebook feed, it is possible to completely fly under the radar of people who would notice the violation and report it to regulators, like supporters of the attacked candidate.
I think the main reason they want sponsored content is, well, it pays their salaries and fuels the stock’s valuation.
SiempreViernes 1629 days ago [-]
Free speech is the tech industry's default excuse for not enforcing something, and for about two decades it worked fine. Please have to have some forbearance while they get over their addiction to that particular excuse.
sp332 1629 days ago [-]
On Twitter it's at least possible for candidates or organizations to have a huge reach without paying money. On Facebook, they limit your reach so that even people who explicitly follow your page don't see your updates in their timeline unless you pay up.
nkkollaw 1629 days ago [-]
There are always bots...
ptah 1629 days ago [-]
> "Ads can be an important part of voice - especially for candidates and advocacy groups the media might not otherwise cover so they can get their message into debates," he added.
translation: I simply cannot say no to the amount of money made from political ads
dominotw 1629 days ago [-]
wondering why is it only 0.5% for twitter while much higher for FB ?
yedava 1629 days ago [-]
Regarding advocacy groups, a few years ago, it was quite easy to setup a page on Facebook, build an audience and spread your message organically. But then Facebook severely limited the content from liked pages that was showing up in your feed. So the page admins had no choice but to buy ads in order for their content to show up in their subscribers feed.
So if Facebook cared more about free speech than increasing profits, they'd go back to the older model where someone with no money, but plenty of time to volunteer, could build a sizeable audience.
It's not bad to want a good return on your investment, but to couch that in a feel-good pitch for free speech just seems wrong.
adam12 1629 days ago [-]
Just ban all political ads.
quarkral 1629 days ago [-]
sounds easy but in practice hard. You can run ads on political and social issues that directly correlate with one candidate's campaign. What about those ads?
But then you could also be running ads to push a public issue such as climate change independent of anyone's campaign.
How do you differentiate between the two?
Traster 1629 days ago [-]
People keep contending that it's difficult to differentiate what a political advert is, but actually that's the wrong question. You don't really need to ban political advertisements, you simply ban adverts from political organisations. The Federal government already has rules in place to determine what a political action committee is. So for a start you just ban all PACs, 501(c)(4|5|6)s and 527 organisations. That basically covers the overwhelming majority of political advertising, and then we can review later if we think it hasn't been effective.
quarkral 1628 days ago [-]
The reason it's difficult to differentiate is because currently media backlash is actually the only accountability any of these tech companies have for doing the right thing. For example, there's basically no government regulation for making sure companies encrypt your passwords properly; the only incentive to do so is because the media would make a joke out of the company if unencrypted passwords were ever leaked.
So you can ban advertisements from political organizations, but if a third-party or the Russians start running misinformation ads on climate change and pro-life, the media won't exactly recognize it as a "non political advertisement" and leave off.
In the election of 2016, most of the misinformation was not directly initiated by the political candidates. Your suggestion wouldn't affect any of the misinformation spread in 2016.
alexandercrohde 1629 days ago [-]
Meh, those are just details. Banning political ads will definitely hit some grey area, but whatever that grey area is would be better than where we are now.
s3r3nity 1629 days ago [-]
What counts as a political ad, in a world where many would claim "everything is political?"
walls 1629 days ago [-]
Simple, is the ad for a product or not?
vonmoltke 1629 days ago [-]
So, the Humane Society or Susan G. Komen Foundation soliciting donations for charitable work is a political ad?
kotajacob 1629 days ago [-]
Just ban all ads.
mc32 1629 days ago [-]
So should be only left with live face to face stump speeches?
gorgoiler 1629 days ago [-]
It is possible for the state to ensure that political parties get media airtime without having to buy ads.
Canada, Ireland, and the UK all do this with Party Political Broadcasts:
The UK uses think tanks to get around media restrictions on political advertising. They put out press releases that get reported as "news".
jandrese 1629 days ago [-]
But these are limited to political parties. You are proposing to take away the voice of SuperPACs who make the lion's share of the paid advertisement in a modern campaign. If billionaires don't get a voice how can they control the government? You are going to make them go back to regular lobbying and regulatory capture! What a travesty!
tathougies 1629 days ago [-]
No thabks. individuals need to have the right to be able to pay the standard publishing fare to publish their voices. That right shouldnt be reserved solely for state sanctioned political parties. That's a sad sad state of affairs.
SolaceQuantum 1629 days ago [-]
I mean, I'm sure PACs can post to their facebook pages like the rest of us normies do. No need to purchase more eyeballs!
sjwright 1629 days ago [-]
Obviously not–but I'm also not brimming with confidence that the road we're presently heading down is definitely better.
thawaway1837 1629 days ago [-]
There are many ways to promote yourself and your message on Facebook itself that do not involve paying Facebook.
TearsInTheRain 1629 days ago [-]
I wonder if all of this fervor against political ads would have happened if Clinton was elected.
tyfon 1629 days ago [-]
Paid political ads gives the ones with the most money an unfair advantage it's as simple as that.
I'm all for the actions of twitter in this case but it really should be mandated by law.
stjohnswarts 1628 days ago [-]
Zuck, it's a private company, you don't owe anyone a "voice" especially fake political ads. Just shut it all down if you don't want to fact check. it's all less than 1% of your ad revenue. Be the good guy for once instead of the mocked automaton everyone thinks you are.
DevKoala 1628 days ago [-]
I agree with Zuckerberg on this one; improving transparency and policing the platform is the solution. Twitter doesn't have the answer for "what is a political ad" and I believe soon enough they will run into issues that will put in evidence their lack of foresight.
NullPrefix 1629 days ago [-]
I wonder if it is okay to run ads about Zuck's presidential campaign. I know that he is not running, but still, somebody can put ads about it.
jonlucc 1629 days ago [-]
Only if you're a currently serving politician or a candidate. Also, only as long as Facebook believes that your candidacy is for the right reasons, else they'll still apply the rules to you.
52-6F-62 1629 days ago [-]
As an outside observer, it appears he hasn't donned the Caesar haircut for nothing.
bilekas 1629 days ago [-]
This ^
I would donate to that advertising campaign.
buboard 1629 days ago [-]
Suppose you want to campaign to get Facebook to ban political ads. Should you be able to pay to promote it or not?
justin66 1629 days ago [-]
Would anyone actually miss having their social network of choice inundating then with political ads?
SiempreViernes 1629 days ago [-]
Now now, it's not like advertisement in general is particularly wanted so it's deeply unfair to single out a simple global tech giant with such an insidious question!
FillardMillmore 1629 days ago [-]
I think the crux of the question raised here is: "Is there anything wrong, ethically or legally, with a social media site accepting payments in exchange for algorithmically amplifying the amount of people that see the paid-for content? Does the answer to this question depend on the veracity of the information presented in the content? If so, does Facebook have some sort of obligation to ensure that paid-for content is substantiated by facts and evidence?"
_cairn 1629 days ago [-]
Agree wholeheartedly with how you posed the question, I would like to expand:
Should Adult (xxx) sites be held accountable for ads for male enlargement pills/snake oils? I personally don't think so. Is the answer to this problem to teach our population that blindly accepting what you read is safe (you can trust information posted on social media/public internet sites as fact) OR do we instead teach our citizens to filter information analytically and do research the way you are taught to in university for example?
Personally I think the former option is an intractable problem. Why try to make it safe for your population NOT to have to think instead of just teaching them how to think critically?
FillardMillmore 1629 days ago [-]
> Why try to make it safe for your population NOT to have to think instead of just teaching them how to think critically?
Hmmm...a question like that is essentially opening up the gates for speculation - the kind of speculation that may not paint the government (the body that seems to be pushing for, as you say, "trustworthy information") in the most benevolent light.
I agree with the essence of what you're getting at - it's the old biblical trope of giving a man a fish vs. teaching a man to fish. But I could think of many possible benefits (for a government) in having a population with a reduced ability or incentive to be analytical and think critically. To be fair, I can think of many possible costs as well - I don't know whether one would outweigh the other.
CaptainZapp 1629 days ago [-]
"Ads can be an important part of voice - especially for candidates and advocacy groups the media might not otherwise cover so they can get their message into debates,"
Well, Mr. Zuckerberg; I don't think this explains, let alone justifies your policy of allowing outright lies in political ads without any pushback.
Whenever you think this company cannot sink any lower you're always in for a massive surprise and disappointment.
toss1 1628 days ago [-]
I'd be OK with Zuck's approach, IFF it were implemented with full transparency.
I define full transparency as providing a full, near-real-time, public record of EVERY advert run, including (but not limited to): who paid for it & in what currency, all targeting parameters, and count of views.
This would allow any person, public interest group, competitor, or other interested party to be informed and respond as they saw appropriate.
This would also make FB adverts more like major media adverts, where anyone can (with a little bit of work) see exactly who is running what for & against their position.
As FB is currently opaque, it is a magnet for manipulators seeking the holy grail of adverts, micro-targeted at the exact people who will respond, highly effective at changing behavior, and completely unnoticed by the opposition. FB may see this as attracting revenue, but the transparent option described above will likely generate more with the likely cycles of responses to adverts, counter-responses, etc.
False claims, wholly misleading edits? Fine, just as long as everyone can see who's spreading that crap, and to whom, and can respond.
pjspycha 1629 days ago [-]
I don't see a problem with having advertisers require to have references or sources to any quotes or facts they represent. The sources would have to be credible and shown in context (no sound bites) and perhaps view-able by the users easily. Facebook or a third-party should be required to make sure the sources look credible and all reported facts or quotes have sources attached. Such a system would put most of the leg work on the advertisers and make the process easier to administer.
I have no idea if Facebook already does any of this, but from their policy about fact checking, they do not require any political ads to go through their third party fact-check. Otherwise the third-party fact checker appears to do all the research themselves or they may reach out to the advertisers for more information.
I work on a presidential campaign on the digital side.
1 - If you take away FB advertising, then you reduce political upward mobility of many lesser known candidates.
2 - FOX, CNN, MSNBC and others will have an unfair advantage to promote an insider candidate or a candidate the bosses at these networks want to help promote.
If you're okay with the above outcome, then push to end FB advertising. I can tell you from the inside, FB is tremendously important in giving smaller and lesser candidates a fighting chance against those backed by big money, establishment and insiders.
I'm even curious if AOC herself would have been able to prevail without FB advertising.
Even something small as promoting an event like a town hall, greatly benefits the smaller candidates, IMO.
As for twitter advertising, it wasn't helpful for us and it only constitutes a small fraction of "digital". If you look at the campaign spending data across you'll see a similar trend. So it's an easier decision for twitter.
mattnewton 1629 days ago [-]
The real problem for me is the way political ads on social media (and on the web in general) can effectively undermine FEC attribution rules. Between direct targeting with ads that run for short periods, and promoted posts of new accounts, there is basically no way for existing regulators to enforce attribution to a PAC or candidate, so outright lies and shady adverts fly under the radar with even less consequences than in the television or print media. The debate here has to be about steps they can take to help the FEC enforce it's rules I think, not about banning it altogether.
It feels like a false dichotomy, especially when freedom of speech is invoked.
We don't talk about freedom of speech for drug companies when we require a side effects disclaimer at the end of a pharmacutical ad - it feels disingenuous to me to talk about it here too when we should be talking about enforcing the FEC's attribution guidelines.
davinic 1629 days ago [-]
I think this could be solved by disallowing targeted political ads at any micro level. Allow campaigns to target metro areas and very broad demo groups much like TV does.
mattnewton 1629 days ago [-]
Lots of potential solutions here (and potential implementation problems with enforcement), but afaict nobody is even talking about it, they are argueing over a simple black and white ban.
LanceH 1629 days ago [-]
The fundamental problem is that one party thinks the people voting for the other party could only possibly do so if they were tricked. This attitude alone will get some people to vote against you.
The government elite, of course, see through these shenanigans and are just out to protect people from voting wrongly.
ineedasername 1628 days ago [-]
I wonder if there might be a middle path where only ads directly from the campaign are allowed. It wouldn't necessarily resolve the "is it telling the truth" issue, but it would curtail some of the more extreme black propaganda & dark money ads.
rhizome 1628 days ago [-]
We could probably look back to when the laws were passed about identifying the source of broadcast and print ads, as well as "...and I approve this message" in broadcast ads. I'm sure there was some controversy, or at least discussion, that could be reflected upon in the current fight. Perhaps the whole history of fights in campaign finance reform applies.
I wouldn't be surprised if Facebook has already done this.
sjwright 1629 days ago [-]
We could solve this with just a few simple requirements for online political advertising. Here's some I came up with in the past few minutes—rough ideas but let's see how they play out.
• Require all advertisements to be published N days in advance on a public noticeboard with full details of every aspect of the advertisement—audience, budget, funding entity.
• Do not allow targeting in any political advertising other than to narrow adverts to the geography of the candidate or issue—e.g. ads for a congressperson to their congressional district.
• Require the business unit handling political advertising to have strict isolation from the rest of the company. Maybe require it to be an independent entity.
slim 1629 days ago [-]
the second point still gives too much power to facebook
sjwright 1629 days ago [-]
Sure, but we can't solve for Facebook's market dominance.
gandutraveler 1628 days ago [-]
I'm not a fan of facebook but lately I'm seeing a lot of attacks on fb. Some are valid and some are outrageous. The problem of misinformation has existed for ages and if fb stops then something else will replace it. I don't use fb anymore but still see fake news/ads all over the internet.
If we seriously need to fix this then it should be enforced by a law which applies to every media/news organization.
sobani 1628 days ago [-]
Doesn't mean Facebook should actively try to make the problem worse.
Luckily Twitter didn't follow the reasoning that as long as it's not illegal, it's OK.
brownkonas 1629 days ago [-]
More broadly, Congress has failed to act with respect to campaign finance reform. Twitter's response gives me (some) hope that there could be a grass roots, free market reform of sorts.
Fundraising becomes slightly less important if you can't spend the money online. Not sure of the overall effect, as TV providers are unlikely to turn away the lucrative ad spend.
sitkack 1629 days ago [-]
The humans need to come to terms with how we communicate facts and opinions. This started in the modern age with Bernays [1] in 1928.
I'd like to have an ISO9001 traceable, encrypted log of all the ads shown to me. Every pixel that was placed on a screen meant to change my mind. And it should be traceable all the way back to the mine the ore was dug from.
Political ads are not a problem. Targeted political ads are the real problem. I think all targeted ads are the real problem.
tathougies 1629 days ago [-]
I actually think you're right and if any regulation is to be made, this seems the easiest and most non intrusive while still offering all candidates a level playing field.
v4dok 1629 days ago [-]
I am starting to think that restricting the number of people you can follow/add as friends to a number that would actually be possible to follow without specialized algorithm might be a good idea.
As long as there is such informational overload, there is no escaping from having algorithms sort things for you
hinkley 1629 days ago [-]
I’ve had several occasions where a coworker in a meeting said words to the effect of “if someone offers us money we’re gonna take it.”
Blurting out, “so you’re a whore then” in a staff meeting? Not okay. So I just stared.
If I could stand to look at Zuck I’d be staring right now.
dredmorbius 1628 days ago [-]
I once remarked to an editor (reporter) for a tech news site
(appearing occasionally on HN) that a specific channel there listed itself as specifically sponsored.
Their response: I'm glad to hear we're <doing it for money> and not <giving it away for free>.
(Using words beginning with 'W' and 'S' respectively for each concept.)
hinkley 1628 days ago [-]
I have told several coworkers in private that if money was all they were interested in, that there are more lucrative fields.
I was referred for a CtH position at a small company years ago where they turned out to be, to quote the old CIA line, looking for a certain moral flexibility. I declined to convert, and I also don't accept referrals from that person anymore.
I was not at all surprised to see a couple of those people end up at an online gambling company in my neighborhood a few years later. And relieved they didn't seem to recognize me.
I keep hearing there are people who went into CS entirely for the money. I have deluded myself that I hadn't met many of them. But you encounter a bunch of them in one place and it's pretty hard to ignore.
xwowsersx 1629 days ago [-]
As best I can tell, a lot of the arguments here are something along the lines of (trying to steel man): letting politicians pay for ads in order to increase their reach reduces the competition to a question of who has the most money and gives an outsized voice to them, leaving the politicians with less money unable to compete. So in order to ensure a vibrant and fair democratic process and political debate, we shouldn't allow politicians to buy ads on social media platforms. (If I've misrepresented the basic argument, please correct me.)
But the thing is that the whole premise of free speech is the belief that sunlight is best disinfectant for bad ideas. We have this belief (whether warranted or not, though I'd argue it is) that _utlimately_ we will arrive at the good ideas and reject the bad ideas through public discourse. In other words, we have faith, from a holistic standpoint, that the polity will decide issues based on the substance of the ideas presented to them in the political arena (I understand well that this isn't the case in specific instances nor in every period of time, but it's still the belief broadly speaking). That being the case, increased reach - where reach simply = number of eyeballs you shove your message in front of - doesn't mean anything per se. The people who participate in the democratic process and public discourse still must sift through the ideas to determine which are good and which are bad.
Maybe the counterargument to my point is "well, yes, we do believe that ideas are ultimately what win out, but if the candidates with less money cannot reach an audience, then you never get to a debate in the first place."
I guess I do hear that argument and I'm unsure.
I think where this gets complicated is when you start to think not just in terms of hard cash and spending on political ads. What about when media outlets and other organizations are dedicated, for whatever reason, to a certain candidate. For example, when TYT clearly favors a candidate and spends an entire election season praising them, etc - should that be allowed? In some ways those are resources being used as well to increase the reach of a candidate. It's time, money, staff, resources, etc. It seems to me that it just gets very dicey when you look at things just in terms of cash. You end up having to effectively try to centralize the whole process and make sure that everyone's reach is exactly even, which just isn't possible without massive government intervention and coercion and flagrant violations of free speech. I just don't see how this works out well in the end.
dredmorbius 1628 days ago [-]
Much of the "sunlight" defence points back to John Stuart Mill. Mill's argument has been subtly distorted over the years.
I strongly recommend Jill Gordon's paper "John Stuart Mill and the 'Marketplace of Ideas'" (1997), which explores Mill's views and the history of their use, in depth:
Now, apparently, many are convinced it is wrong to have any barriers to lying.
The con men have certainly gotten the upper hand. I suppose if we fall for this obvious and absurd BS we deserve the world we get (collectively).
jaimex2 1628 days ago [-]
Fair enough. If they want political advertising on Facebook to stop just ban the practice of political advertising.
I don't know why we expect any company to self regulate when an action hurts its interests.
mwsfc 1628 days ago [-]
My take? This is really a pretty simple equation for FB. Politcal ads = good business opportunity ....perhaps essential.
Since FB tends to be a self-reinforcing echo chamber on both ends of the political spectrum, political ads will keep users engaged with the platform. For a variety of reasons interest in the 2020 campaign is likely to be sky high so allowing the ads should keeps FB's DAU's & MAU's in the preferred direction. Not allowing the ads could in-turn adversely affect those metrics and subsequently pull down ALL of their advertising rates. Freedom of Speech rational of allowing adds? (scoff, scoff, snort, outburst of laughter.....)
colejohnson66 1628 days ago [-]
It sounds like you’re saying that because Facebook wants more money, they can do what they want. No. They shouldn’t get a free pass simply because it maximizes profit.
Slight tangent: Regulation is a thing because businesses have been shown to not self regulate when its in their best interest not to. A corporation maximizing profits could be a good thing for consumers, but it could also be bad. And when it’s bad, that’s when regulation is supposed to come in.
mwsfc 1628 days ago [-]
No, I never said Facebook is justified to do whatever they want because of their desire to reap more profits. Slight tangent: I don't disagree with your comments about regulation. Back to my earlier point, FB stands to lose more if they don't run political ads so expecting them to change their position in light Twitter's recent announcement is just not going to happen. Cloaking their position as promoting Freedom of Speech is complete rubbish.
klyrs 1629 days ago [-]
A true win for free speech. Not "free as in beer" but "free as in if you're rich enough to pay more than the competition, that's your price"
psds2 1629 days ago [-]
Someone just needs to start a dark money PAC promoting the NAMBLA agenda, surely they have a candidate in a race somewhere. Fill Facebook with these ads.
> This week, another critic emerged: Adriel Hampton, a marketer and progressive activist in San Francisco, who on Monday announced his intention to run for governor of California in protest of the policy, posting fake ads to prove his point.
> Facebook has since said that it won’t allow Mr. Hampton to take advantage of its lax approach to political speech despite his candidacy, and he says he is exploring his legal options.
The rules are enforced if and when they want to, completely arbitrarily.
undefined3840 1629 days ago [-]
I don’t know how anyone can buy the free speech argument from Facebook when they are extremely strict on any display of adult nudity...
jinushaun 1628 days ago [-]
This is why Zuck doesn’t understand Instagram and Tik Tok. Politics and news articles is what killed Facebook for the new generation.
mikelyons 1629 days ago [-]
This whole thing is one huge advocacy to remove money from politics in every way we can.
If money is speech, only the rich are heard!
ping_pong 1628 days ago [-]
He still hasn't learned despite years of being CEO. It's frankly stupid of him to have responded.
You don't dig in your heels because that attracts the media attention, like a shark to a drop of blood. You say "This is something we're going to look at and evaluate closely." And then wait until the news gets bored of it. And then quietly release that you won't because of several reasons.
12thwonder 1629 days ago [-]
freedom to express one's opinion is different from spreading disinformation (e.g. incorrect election dates) to manipulate public, and the latter should be minimized somehow someway. i would like to know if you disagree and why.
simion314 1629 days ago [-]
I want to ask the "Free speech" defenders on this thread, if the political ads are properly labeled and FB offers me a switch to turn them all off would it make you happy?
dredmorbius 1628 days ago [-]
Keep in mind that a critical element of political (and in broader scope, all) advertising, is that its effects are not simply limited to the direct recipient. Political advertising literally shapes representation and policy.
This is even more the case for narrowly targeted, and particularly negative / dissuading advertising. A chief tool and complaint in recent years has been of suppressing voter turnout, at times through issue advertising, but also specifically by spreading disinformation about candidates, voting processes, locations, times, and requirements.
Simply disabling advertising for a narrow range of users capable and motivated to block ads does not protect against the social consequences of such activities.
That's from someone who's not a free-speech absolutist.
resters 1629 days ago [-]
The real issue with FB and Twitter is the news feed algorithms, not the paid content.
The inciting incident that gave rise to the concerns is simply that Trump won. Only a tiny fraction of the reach that Trump obtained via FB and Twitter was paid advertising.
Most of the reach that benefitted Trump was simply the algorithm amplifying journalistic stories (mostly negative) that allowed Trump to dog whistle effectively.
Imagine someone with 800 FB friends who shares an article from, the NYT or Huffpost that is harshly critical of Trump for saying something that comes across as racist. There are three broad categories to characterize those who see the shared content:
a) people who are in the target audience of the article, who dislike Trump, who expected him to be racist, and who consider the article further proof (and vindication) of their view
b) people who read the coverage and find it unfair to Trump, even if they agree with the gist.
c) people who actually agree with the racist view Trump is alleged to have expressed.
If the user sharing the article has 800 friends, most are probably in group a, but Trump benefits from any friends the user has who are in groups b or c. To them, the article reinforces their support for Trump or their view that the coverage was unfair.
For those who view the coverage as unfair, a steady stream of similarly unfair-seeming articles makes them effectively immune to negative press about Trump. In 2019 many of Trump's supporters are in this group. When Trump describes "fake news" he is appealing to this group. The reach that benefits Trump may be 100 of the 800 friends, and it cost Trump's campaign nothing. Trump triggered these kinds of signaling cascades many, many times during the 2016 campaign.
Sadly, the biggest problem is reporting that is not journalism but in-group focused entertainment writing. Many of the "most shared" articles from major papers are not thorough, in-depth stories, they are light on journalism and heavy on in-group signaling. It is this kind of article that helps Trump the most, for the aforementioned reasons.
These are also the kinds of articles that get the most clicks and generate the most revenue for the paper.
dredmorbius 1628 days ago [-]
Money doesn't talk, it swears.
-- Bob Dylan
SuperSandro2000 1627 days ago [-]
Fool
nswest23 1628 days ago [-]
can we all just stop using fb? Then no one will advertise there.
Zuck lies, and he likes earning revenue off liars as well.
Paraesthetic 1628 days ago [-]
Zuck the cuck
throwaway129917 1629 days ago [-]
Always remember: Zuckerberg is devoid of ethics. He'd eat your child if it made him a profit.
gorgoiler 1629 days ago [-]
Facebook could provide a quota of free advertising to political parties, and not allow them to buy any more outside their quota. This would be akin to government provided airtime (“Party Political Broadcasts”) as done in Canada, UK and Ireland.
I’ve always felt nervous about the role of money in politics and removing the requirement for massive ad-spend budgets might bring us closer to a more moral democracy, and away from pay-to-play.
WhompingWindows 1629 days ago [-]
What about all the "independent" "non-affiliated" groups who are absolutely tied to a political party? How do you adjudicate those edge cases? It's the edge cases, IMO, that are the real bear here.
gorgoiler 1629 days ago [-]
If they are absolutely tied to a political party, then they would count towards the quota. If they claim not to have a link then it becomes Facebook’s job to determine if there is one, which seems a lot more tractable than determining if a fact is true or false.
Easy at least when the message is “don’t vote for Bob!”, than when it is “we don’t see any harm in GMO wheat”. Unattributed attack ads are pretty obvious but it’s harder to tie issue ads to the party they benefit.
tathougies 1629 days ago [-]
No thanks. As a member of a small party that seems like it would just make us unable to meet the ridiculous requirements to qualify. As it is right now we can just pay for ads instead of having to meet arbitrary criteria. Thats a much fairer state of things
gorgoiler 1629 days ago [-]
When you register to appear as an option on a ballot paper, wouldn’t that be sufficient to qualify for your quota of airtime for which you do not have to spend campaign funds?
Rendered at 06:24:09 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
It's interesting how hard Zuck is working to try and conflate the idea of 'free speech' with paid advertisements. To put it another way, if advertising on Facebook is part of my free speech, surely Zuck must run my adverts despite the fact I have no money to pay him for them.
If, let's say, a group advocating for the abolishment of asset forfeiture wants to communicate their message, and the media is not covering it, it would be natural for them to try paying for ads, and the obvious place to put ads are on social media, since that's where the eyeballs are (cf, the collapse of the news media). If social media bans those ads then while the group clearly still has free speech, they will have little way to meaningfully exercise it.
You might say - and I'd certainly agree - that the real problem is a world where everyone is on Twitter and Facebook to the exclusion of all else, and thus a world where 3-4 CEOs can unilaterally decide that nobody needs to hear anything about asset forfeiture (or whatever). And yet, that's the world we're in.
(You also don't seem to understand what "free speech" is. By your logic, a law banning the purchase television ads for Democratic candidates - but allowing the purchase of television ads for Republicans - would be okay, because after all, those ads cost money, so it's not restricting the Democratic candidates right to free speech. That's absurd, no?)
If a group wants to post on social media, they can just post on social media. Ads increase the reach of those with money. That is exactly what they do and nothing more. Why would we want to further amplify the voice of those who have money? The fact that the cause is the abolition of X or the support of Y is a non sequitur, in either case it is the viewpoint of someone with the money to promote their voice.
I have very little concern that the opinions of those with large quantities of money at their disposal are underrepresented in politics, or do not have the ability to make their voices heard.
What you're missing is that all viewpoints you'll ever see are intrinsically those of someone with the money to promote their voice.
Suppose you have an idea in your head and you want to get it out there. The first thing you have to do is express that idea. Write it down or create a video etc. That takes time, which is an opportunity cost. If it takes you an hour, that's an hour you couldn't spend working for money, which means that somebody who has to spend that time working for money doesn't have the time to express their idea.
On top of that, the more time you spend polishing your expression, the more convincing you can make it, so right off the bat there is a direct relationship between time/money and speech.
Then you need to get people to look at it. If all you do is write a document that sits in a drawer in your house, nobody will ever see it. So you need to spend more time distributing your idea, or get other people who are willing to spend their time distributing it.
Political advertising is just paying a third party to do that for you. It costs less than hiring a staff of people to promote the idea "organically" (otherwise it would be poor value for money and nobody would pay for it), which means it enables people with less money to get their message in front of people.
If I may jump in here, I live in a country where political advertisement is strictly regulated and almost all political debate takes place on public television, available to everyone, and there's a commitment to neutrality in reporting and equal representation of all parties.
Now this surely doesn't give everyone the same voice and many people are still marginalised and despite the lack of money involvement are excluded, but it may be worth pointing out that the US status quo is not the only model on this planet.
Instead of increasing the asymmetry by letting those with more money expand their influence even more, you could take measures to level the playing field.
I can see all sorts of things working for a small country that do not scale to a large country. Something that works well in, eg, Denmark might be appropriate if applied to somewhere of comparable size and complexity like the New York city centre but in appropriate if applied to a continent.
One thing that I think would actually be easier to do in the US to achieve the same thing is to cap and publicly finance campaign spending. Given the strong emphasis on free speech that the US has it might be simpler to go the reverse route. If 'money is speech', even out the playing field on a financial basis.
The problem is when candidates have to take money from special interests just in order to buy enough advertising to cause anyone to have even heard of them. Provide enough public money so that candidates don't have to do that, and then candidates won't have to do that.
You forget that there is never enough money or enough advertising. All the money comes from "special interest groups" except if is provided by the government. Of course people "hear" the candidates...it's just that the candidates want a 24/7 audience, lately they have whole media corporations delivering the message for them. As we know most of the media organisations are now partisan (either by choice or by obligation). Maybe little regulation wouldn't hurt to give a chance to the little guy who can't afford to buy a media corporation?
Yes there is. That's the point. Candidates regularly defeat better-funded opponents because there is a threshold of exposure past which the voters have heard what there is to hear from both candidates and more spending has diminishing returns.
> Of course people "hear" the candidates
No they don't. Can you name all of the candidates running for the Democratic nomination this year? First try to off the top of your head. Now here's a list:
https://www.politico.com/2020-election/president/democratic-...
How many of the ones you missed have less than $5M right now vs. more than that? Pretty good correlation, right? Yet I doubt your preference between Sanders vs. Biden has that much to do with which of them has more money, because they both have more than the threshold amount needed to make you aware of their positions.
> Maybe little regulation wouldn't hurt to give a chance to the little guy who can't afford to buy a media corporation?
How is it supposed to help the little guy who can't afford to buy a media corporation to pass a law restricting the little guy from buying political advertising, meanwhile the people who can afford to buy a media corporation carry on doing so as ever?
There's an interesting study out there (I'll dig it up later if I find it), that finds that the average American has virtually no influence or voice on what is discussed in media. There is nothing civic or egalitarian about American media or politics any more, it's no surprise that it appears like a cynical spectacle. It is indeed all advertisers, famous people, full-time twitter agitators, and Fox and CNN.
The irony here is I think that the social platforms actually could be used to authentically promote common voices if they were designed with that commitment in mind. If the rules don't change for the owners, I don't see it happening.
Conversely, targeted advertisement lets you bombard people with certain inclinations with ads that nudge them to behave in a certain way. That isn't free speech, its targeted manipulation. The targeting is whats important here. For selling goods and services, its fine. For selling leaders or tarnishing leaders, its evil.
Allow opt-in targeting by allowing classified ads, old-school newspaper and Computer Shopper style. Otherwise I think it is now pretty clear the cost is too high.
The point is that it costs more to promote if you can't buy advertising, which increases the advantage of those with a boatload of money. The people who own Fox News or Facebook would still get to decide what everybody sees but then someone who disagrees with them couldn't even buy advertising to air their competing ideas.
The person with zero dollars has zero voice either way. The question is whether someone with thousands of dollars should be able to get their message in front of the relevant people, or only someone with billions of dollars.
> Conversely, targeted advertisement lets you bombard people with certain inclinations with ads that nudge them to behave in a certain way. That isn't free speech, its targeted manipulation. The targeting is whats important here. For selling goods and services, its fine. For selling leaders or tarnishing leaders, its evil.
Suppose Big Oil wants to build a pipeline in your back yard. They're going to have your neighbor's house seized through eminent domain (or maybe yours), then install a big ugly pipe that will reduce your property value and forevermore be carrying flammable poisonous carcinogenic petroleum that could at any time leak out into your groundwater. You have no idea that this is in the works and won't know until it's too late unless somebody tells you about it right now.
I live a hundred miles from you along the same planned pipeline and I don't want it, so I get together all the people I can find and pool our money to buy issue ads to notify everyone in the path of the pipeline that it's going to happen if we don't get together and oppose it. We can't afford to buy nation-wide untargeted ads, but we can afford to target the people who live right near the planned pipeline and have views that make it likely they'll help us oppose it.
Is this to be prohibited in your opinion? What do you suggest those people do instead in that case?
Just because that’s “how it was” does not mean we have to continue to politically acquiesce to it going forward
If that’s your argument for doing nothing wouldn’t that have been a great way to frame it 250 years ago
“Well Britain & the king are just doing what they always have done!”
Grow up, man. Grow up HN.
This is fealty to nonsense emotional crying on the part of average humans who have been emotionally fluffed into believing they’re owed our deference
Until Zuck can conjure a plague or part the seas, he’s just one man and can go screw
It's not your feed, it's their feed; you're just the person eating it.
Everyone seems to be forgetting that this is a 100% opt-in service. Why do we get to say what FB is obligated to do and to what standards they have to keep their website at?
My own two cents is that Facebook should be dismantled to restore competition, then be allowed to do whatever it wants.
From the earliest of its beginnings, one of the greatest flaws of democracy was masses being susceptible to manipulation, and Facebook massively amplified this. It has been repeatedly and reliably used for manipulation of voters with unprecedented effectiveness and on an unprecedented scale.
Trump and Brexit showed that even the oldest and most mature democracies are not impervious to such manipulation.
I was shocked how Facebook's Libra initiative quickly detracted people: all of a sudden, we're all discussing whether they should be allowed to run crypto currency, and nobody is talking about how they broke democracy. Almost as if the whole Libra thing is a giant distraction...
The truth is they let you see most of your friends' and family's posts, but pretty much any commercial or non-profit's post is held for ransom. If you "like" a local band or want to hear from the local gardening club, they will be encouraged to pay to "boost" their posts to you.
If fb had to say "you will see the posts from your connections based on how much they pay us," up front when registering and in all their ads (like the fast-talking disclosures in US drug advertizing), then people would have a more accurate view of the service they are using. Of course, long privacy disclosures would be necessary too.
Effort can take the form of standing on the street holding a sign, and it takes money to make a sign, and time to stand there.
It can take the form of going door to door and talking to people and giving them printed materials. You need the money for the printed materials, and the time to canvass the neighborhood.
Same for running for local political office.
Same for making a documentary, or a podcast, or a YouTube channel.
Same for running a Facebook ad.
Communication takes time and money. Getting money also takes time, to earn it, to inherit it, to ask donors or investors for it...
There’s no way to have any communication at all without these elements.
Those with money can pay someone to tell someone else something.
Those with time can tell everyone they meet.
That's how a democracy. Some have bigger voices compared to others.
Zuck himself, ironically, has helped create that situation by deliberately reducing organic reach to force people to pay to be heard.
This is a cynical ploy for money on Zuck's/Facebook's part. If they really cared about free speech, they wouldn't hobble the organic reach of political actors.
If I'm able to have more signs or youtube channels people will pay more attention to me and thus I'm using an advantage the other party may not have the financial ability to respond to.
I think this idea could go further but it seems obvious that money is another unbiased tool to promote your speech. Money doesn't have a political affiliation. People can use money in a biased way just like they can use a camera, tv channel, or sign to have a bias. The medium isn't biased the way it's used is.
Especially when we already live in a massively unequal stage where a few coorporations have access to the most popular websites, magazines, newpapers, tv channels, allowing money into this equation as an unbiased tool will only increase this inequality in the ability to spread a message.
I think we as a society should make changes so that money has as little influence as possible. Of course, that battle will never end and there will be pushback from the small minority of people of have the overwhelming amount of wealth in this world, but changes such as banning political ads in twitter is a very good start.
Similarly, if we decide that inequality in terms of being able to politically influence people is bad, and money exacerbates that inequality, then we can ban political ads. And if something else comes along that does the same thing, ban that too in a way that makes sense.
Having such a small number of people wield such huge political influence is a shame, but what is even worse is when people accept that as inevitable and perpetuates that myth.
My post was just talking about eliminating inequality. I make no claim about reducing inequality.
Removing money has been tried in places like Russia. People stop working and if they are forced will not try as hard.
Money has been part since the beginning. To vote you needed to own property which made sense because land owners paid the government in the form of taxes. Personal income taxes came after the war to pay for the war debts.
By the way every time there's an unrestrained hyper exponential curve, it leads to civil unrest pretty quickly. A lot of terrible things come in the wake of economic hardship.
> it would be natural for them to try paying for ads, and the obvious place to put ads are on social media
It would be natural to them to post to their Facebook page because that's what social media is for and then for their committed network of supporters to repost etc.
Remember - that's the advantage of social media - you can quickly get the work out to your supporters without having to go through intermediaries, or having to pay for advertising.
> you can quickly get the work out to your supporters without having to go through intermediaries, or having to pay for advertising.
How do you think Facebook makes money? And as a followup, why do you think people pay money to run ads on Facebook?
Like, I 100% agree with you that this is how it should work, and it's how we all thought it would work 15 years ago, but it feels oddly disconnected from the world we live in.
It might push the platforms to feed people with an equal share of all sides instead of feeding them what the "want" and anyone else has to pay
Take this case, for example. URL says it all: https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/muslims-take-out-full-page-n...
It sounds nice to say that we are going to keep some communication channels free of political speech. It is an option. But it is possible (I claim: likely) that more communication leads to better political outcomes, so sealing off easy-to-use channels like advertising may not actually help.
Not when that speech is deceptive, and particularly not when people can pay money to a company to ensure that those lies are disseminated as widely as possible.
I believe this is true and also that this is basically the hypothesis motivating freedom of speech under law. However, I believe that modern digital political advertising is a very different kind of communication than the open, genuine discussion in a free marketplace of ideas that free speech advocates often envision.
I think one big problem is information fragmentation taken to the extreme: Each person is now subjected to his or her own individually-targeted propaganda. It is a non-genuine, abusive form of individualized communication that in my opinion tends to erode opportunity for political consensus.
In my view, some forms of political advertising are perfectly acceptable. Attending a political debate and arguing well for your candidacy is perfectly acceptable. Enlisting Cambridge Analytica or foreign intelligence services to employ individual psychometric profiles to serve up the most effectively manipulative propaganda is not acceptable.
Advertising that is more generally broadcast as opposed to narrowly targeted is perfectly acceptable, and potentially even desirable for political discourse. Advertising that is "too" targeted is potentially corrosive to political discourse. I would love to see proposals on how to draw the line, legislatively, that would address these concerns and also pass strict scrutiny.
People disseminate unpaid political messages all the time. Curated feeds or not, they are seeing things which are popular amongst them and they reshare posts they like.
You can argue that people aren't interested enough in politics, but paid ads are not a good and balanced way to get people engaged. It leads to them having an even more skewed view of politics as it biases them towards the interest of those with the most money for political ads (as opposed to what is best for their community). Those interest can align in theory, but if we are trying to select the optimal system, why add paid advertisements if we don't need to?
Please, don't use these sandboxes .. Programmers create real social media for people. Make internet great again, please.
Nitpick: IMHO, feeds aren't curated, since curation implies some kind of human judgement at the least (and preferably an expert's judgement). Feeds are algorithmically sorted. Calling them curated debases the term.
To be clear, my objection isn't to all online advertising but specifically to Zuckerberg defending Facebook's policy with an appeal to free speech. Obviously speech without funding is weak an ineffective, but if Facebook voluntarily chose to eliminate all political advertising, it is irrational to claim that your freedom of speech has been curtailed. Facebook's existence isn't promised to you.
If you aren't wielding the megaphone that is twitter/fb/youtube/whatever, then you are not going to be heard. That's just a fact at this point. Social media has in fact lowered the barrier to entry for expressing speech to large audiences, because before social media there were only newspapers and TV networks that cost significantly more and had significantly more preference towards specific agendas.
I understand the ideological desire for that not to be the case, and maybe society could stop and think how to fulfil that desire, but ignoring the facts of today is not constructive at all.
I disagree. This is only a blanket statement to be taken as fact.
Politicians have been doing town halls, focus groups, and public speeches for decades. Just because we suddenly have social media sites to project their voices to a mich larger audience doesn’t erase all of those. While spending on digital ads have gone up tremendously i’m sure, if we take them out of the equation, people will still be able to hear their candidates voices. Social media websites are not the be-all and end-all of political discourse.
I don't disagree with you! And I think if you'll look around, you'll see it is true. Your ability to get your viewpoint out is, perhaps more than at any other time since the 19th century, dependent on it being deemed acceptable by a handful of powerful gatekeepers. Between the incredible amount of consolidation we've seen in media companies, the dominance Google has on search, the dominance Apple and Google have on app stores, and the dominance a small handful of social media and messaging corporations have on communication, it's kind of amazing how few entities control what so many get to see in every context.
I really, really welcome suggestions on how to fix this. But I don't think pretending it doesn't exist is the answer.
The problem with your initial argument is that paid political ads give even more power to the gatekeepers. It also overlooked the issue that more money equals more speech, meaning grassroots political movements are at an even bigger disadvantage because of the disparity of funds than if everyone had to get their message out organically.
the is the problem with free speech, you accept you will have both and good and hopefully with a preponderance of free speech the good will out weigh the bad.
once you start trying to limit who and where you give bad speech the edge because those who set the rules also determine which is which
the real threat to free speech and democracy is from those sitting in office successfully scaring the people into letting them set limits on who can say anything and what they can say when in reality the only group that should face any such limits are those in office and those beholden to them and the party they represent.
Democracy as a system dispowers the individual (what is a single voice in a sea of milions). It is perfectly rational to not vote (your single vote would never matter, while the time it takes to go vote will).
Since most people want to spend their lives infinity-scrolling a facebook feed, and for some reason political power can be derived from these people, then facebook will have power by deciding what these people get to see, and if it's not facebook then it's twitter, or google, or the ISP, or the department of the internet, or the TV channels, so on and so forth.
only 0.1% of people care about free platform.
"Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one" has been a cliche for a long, long time, and while it is a little flip, there's a truth there. Your freedom of speech does not require me or anyone else to amplify it. Or even listen.
Put another way, do you believe you should be forced to tell other people my message? What about everyone else's?
Everything was fine back when the newspapers had a healthy tension between revenues and credibility. And when the sheer quantity of advertising venues was small and the advertisements devoid of third-order ulterior motives.
Until we can reign in the excesses of online advertising, it's more prudent to be cautious than dive further into the abyss.
Another solution would be to allow the ads but disallow personalized targeting.
- Twitter: no political ads - Facebook: any political ads, including lying.
It would be nice to at LEAST have an agreement that ads saying things that are objectively incorrect should not be run.
For example, if I ran an ad that said "Hacker News was owned by Rupert Murdock" (which is false) then this ad should be blocked.
There might need to be some penalty applied retroactively. Like if you're busted running a fake political ad your company is on timeout for 60 days.
To be fair, I realize this is a difficult problem this is why we might have to add a penalty period.
Surely we can live in a world where we have facts, right?
Then I would say you are living in artificial world delightful for advertisers. I have a Twitter account that I have not really used in a decade and nobody else in my family has ever touched Twitter. My wife has a Facebook account she uses to keep in touch with family, but nobody else in my family has a Facebook account. I know MANY people in my professional world who have neither.
To that end, I think your position is contradictory. If X group has a moral right to use their money to promote speech via ads, why shouldn't media owners have the same right to use their money to promote speech via their platforms?
obviously i don't know much about this area...if anyone has canonical references they could point to i'd love to learn more.
The game we want is one where political movements can organically gain traction based on popularity.
In this world where political ads are banned, movements don't need financiers to be as successful as they could be. In your example, it's ironic you mention the civil forfeiture movement, because they are exactly the type of people who aren't spending money on ads. PACs and Super PACs for election campaigns are doing the spending. I wish you would acknowledge this.
Yes, I don't see anything wrong with that.
If I choose to print 1,000 flyers to hand out, I am using money to amplify my voice. Do you see anything wrong with this?
Facebook Ads are no different.
If you were to buy the entire newspaper's advertising space to amplify your voice I would definitely consider it an abuse of power and wrong.
They're more than free to say whatever they want on their own property and in their own homes. But if they want a seat at the media, then at minimum there needs to be a GIANT disclaimer both before and after the advertisement both calling out the false assertions and letting people know the advertisement is strictly for entertainment purposes.
(1) Women are paid 72 cents on the dollar for doing the same work as men. (2) Rich people pay less taxes than the poor. (3) Blacks are being wantonly killed by the police in large numbers.
However, I think that in a free country, progressives can make ads with such messages, and conservatives are free to debunk them. Likewise, progressives can debunk misleading statements by conservatives.
In phony Facebook ad, Warren said most TV networks will refuse ads with a 'lie' but that’s wrong https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2019/oct...
'Section 315 of the Federal Communications Act of 1934 states:
"If any licensee shall permit any person who is a legally qualified candidate for any public office to use a broadcasting station, he shall afford equal opportunities to all other such candidates for that office in the use of such broadcasting station: Provided, That such licensee shall have no power of censorship over the material broadcast under the provision of this section."
It also specifically says licensees can’t censor "material broadcast by any such candidate."
Broadcasters are bound by that act and therefore can’t reject a presidential candidate’s ad, even if contains false information. (The candidates do have to abide by disclosure rules to make it clear who paid for the ad.)'
The freedom of advocacy is inseparable from the freedom of speech. It costs money to print pamphlets, buy air time, pay people to stand on the corner, conduct opinion polls, etc.
Say that you or I have a novel political idea that we want to advocate for. How do you propose that we do so? We'd probably form a non-profit, spend money contacting potential allies, convince them on the merits of our case and to donate to us, then spend that money on pamphlets, TV, radio ads, etc. That's freedom at work.
If paid advertisements are not free speech, then the concept of free speech would cease to exist beyond street corner rants.
The case Zuck wants to make is that he should be free from the consequences of choosing to take money to distribute lies. He wants to do so by claiming its his obligation to give free speech to politicians but this is clearly rubbish - it's a protection no other megaphone vendor has. Take CNN for example, they can and do refuse to broadcast some political adverts because they have an obligation. An obligation that Zuckerberg contents shouldn't exist. What he is advocating for is a fundamental re-definition of what free speech in the US means.
Per the First Amendment, Zuck can do whatever he likes with his platform. He can refuse to broadcast whatever he wants, just like CNN and other news networks. But just as important, he is free to NOT refuse to broadcast whatever he pleases. There are no legal consequences for that (outside of the narrow exceptions in Brandenburg v Ohio).
The argument that he is making is that he wants Facebook to be a platform that upholds the ideal of free speech. Whether or not Facebook follows through and actually practices this philosophy equally, remains to be seen.
The problem is, that it appears that buy buying a facebook advert you're essentially buying the ability for facebook to refuse to scrutinize you. The argument he's actually trying to make is:
>Should we block all political ads? Google, YouTube and most internet platforms run these same ads, most cable networks run these same ads, and of course national broadcasters are required by law to run them by FCC regulations.
But that's a lie. People aren't criticising Facebook for running the same ads that run on CNN. They're criticising facebook for running ads that CNN refuses to run. But instead, he completely fails to engage with the fact that cable networks have a different, coherent policy. Whilst Facebook's policy is that they're both a free speech platform, but also that they spend more money on getting harmful content off their platform than any other company in the world. That's the reason it's confusing - because the criticism of facebook isn't that its adhering to free speech principles, it's that its selectively using free speech as a defence when it suits them.
The "free from consequences" argument is a thin rationalization for political thuggery. You can't make your case intellectually, so you're going to go after people's livelihoods.
This is a problem far greater than literally anything that could be broadcast in a radio spot. And for now, the photocopiers and push pollers still exist no matter what happens with Facebook.
Except no one has proposed banning bots, machine learning, or shutting down anonymous actors. Those are all boogeymen.
Any paid ad can be required to be transparent to whatever degree we want to impose on the advertiser.
That's why, honestly phrased, this question would be, "will my side continue to stay in power if the other side is allowed to get their message out?"
I don't think any Government should force Facebook's hand; rather they should seek to protect their social license and act independently in their own best long-term interests—as Jack Dorsey recently did for Twitter.
We want free speech, not a lawless society. I hope.
To your point, how is there no way to police threatening messages advertised on facebook? It seems quite easy to figure out who paid for the ad if they are indeed breaking the law with threats.
The flawed argument Zuck made is that in order to have free speech we must have paid speech. That's a self-serving fallacy.
There's a difference between paying for printing costs and paying a middle man to distribute your message to an arbitrary number of people, especially when that middle man has zero accountability and zero marginal cost.
> No one is saying paid speech is not free speech.
The parent to whom I was responding said "It's interesting how hard Zuck is working to try and conflate the idea of 'free speech' with paid advertisement", implying that they believe that paid speech is not free speech.
> The flawed argument Zuck made is that in order to have free speech we must have paid speech.
Zuck never said that. From the article, he is quoted as having said: "Ads can be an important part of voice - especially for candidates and advocacy groups the media might not otherwise cover so they can get their message into debates,"
Zuck never said it explicitly, but it's strongly implied from his conflation of free speech and paid ads that he thinks paid ads are necessary for the freedom of speech.
That's where the fallacy lies. Paid ads, while being free speech, skew the messages' reach. It's cute that he tries to use a grassroots message as the upside, but it overlooks two massive problems that are pervasive on his platform.
1. The deeper your pockets, the louder your megaphone. It doesn't really matter that the little guys can also buy political ads if the big players can drown them out. In fact, I would say it has the opposite effect than the one he suggests. A grassroots effort with a compelling message can make waves without political advertising, e.g. the Arab Spring. But in an environment where most political messaging is ad-based, a small effort will never have enough resources to compete with a larger foe.
2. There is no accountability in the political ads. In one example, there are at least 10 "different" pages all disseminating the same false messages, coordinated at the same time. Yet Facebook says these are unrelated pages. Being as there is no reporting of who is funding the ads, it's impossible to tell if it is a candidate, a PAC, or a foreign power backing them. And as we've seen, that lack of accountability can be very problematic.
We have a lot of rules about political speech because we have seen over time how it can be abused. Social media did not exist at the time, but now it has more power than any other form of media. Twitter sidestepped the whole issue, and kudos to them for it. Candidates and PACs can still get their messages out, but now it has to be on merit rather than money. Facebook is going the opposite direction, and that's a problem.
Paid advertising is not fundamentally different from these.
Hey, if you liked this one, but need a more recent example, you should try getting together with a bunch of people, setting up a little not-for-profit organization[1], soliciting donations, and using that money to make a documentary about your political opponents, decrying them as unfit for public office -- then get in a court case with the FEC telling you that you can't show the movie, because there's going to be an election.
[1] Not a 501(c)(3) charity, mind you; donations aren't tax-deductible. Just a 501(c)(4) not-for-profit.
Paine got his message out by contracting with for-profit publishers to disseminate his book. Facebook is just the new version of that.
Maybe both forms of money entangled speech are worthy of the same protections. But they are two different things.
Advertisers put the speech in front of people whether they want to buy it or not.
https://www.businessinsider.com/exclusive-mark-zuckerbergs-s...
Free means legally unrestricted by the state here, not free of payment or of private guidelines.
My free speech rights include the right to pay for an advertisement to get across my message or to join with others to do so. Progressives dominate the media and academia and want to shut down other outlets.
Don't y'all have Fox News and Sinclair Broadcasting?
Yes, I know we are discussing private censorship which is more acceptable than government censorship. But if FB wants to be considered a general platform, they have to be careful filtering content, including ads.
Free speech at least in the US is protected by the constitution so if this was a free speech issue it wouldn't be on the table because the answer would be: you can't restrict it.
They want the speech which is best for their business. What else are they, a corporation, supposed to want?
But the same holds true of the general use of public airwaves. If they are owned or controlled by a select group of people who sit on the boards, their voice and preferences are going to be a lot more powerful than your average joe on the street.
It is really more than awkward to use "free speech" to advocate for something that is, inherently, not free.
Nothing new, just some sugar coating of 'We Need That Ads Money, are you kidding me?'
If his argument was "free speech" he wouldn't have had to support it with "so they can get their message into debates". Why would "free speech" require supporting evidence.
Looks like you are the one doing the conflation :D .
I’m sorry but liberal democracy isn’t the best form of government because the people are smart (they never have been), it’s the best form of government because the alternative is recurring political violence.
I don't want to assume you're American, but your fatalistic view of government sure does point towards that. I suggest you spend some time looking at how other liberal democracies handle this challenge. Online political advertising remains a challenge everywhere but usually the same legal and ethical frameworks apply—even if the frameworks still fail at the margins.
And to be clear, my objection isn't to all online advertising but specifically to Zuckerberg defending Facebook's stance by appealing to free speech. I don't think any Government should force Facebook's hand; I think they should seek to protect their social license and act independently as Jack Dorsey recently did.
I wouldn’t trust anyone who wanted to be the censor to be the censor.
Separately, while some politics revolves around untestable statements of preference (e.g. Purple team “freedom is more important than equality” vs. Teal team “equality is the best foundation upon which freedom can be built”), there are also statements of fact and it is dangerous to allow demonstrably false claims to spread (Antivaxxers are probably the least controversial example of a dangerously wrong meme on this forum, but others exist all the way back to ancient Greek democracy).
Democracy isn’t Magic: If Antivaxxers got 99.9% of the votes they would still be wrong, the only difference is they would cause more harm.
It's not a coherent comment in the context of the US 1st amendment.
And by the way, the First Amendment disallows not only prior restraint, but many other government restraints on speech as well. It's just that prior restraint is considered the most egregious and hence subject to the greatest judicial scrutiny.
The main issue I have with this is how Facebook strategically blends advertisements (which is often political during election cycles) together with organic non-sponsored content.
Anecdote: My 84 year old grandmother spends 1-2 hours per day scrolling through Facebook's news feed. When I watch her do it, she pays ZERO attention to why she's seeing a specific piece of content (to her, there's no difference between a post that's labeled "Sponsored" versus an organic post from a family member). In other words, for my grandmother, Facebook has not done an effective job at informing her when she's viewing a paid advertisement vs. organic non-sponsored content. This is a clear form of user manipulation that needs to stop.
Even when I scroll through Facebook, I often don't notice the "Sponsored" label on posts until after I've already read most of the post.
To me, the primary issue is that Facebook does not adequately differentiate organic content from sponsored content.
At least when watching television, it's absolutely clear when you're watching paid-for commercials - it's harder to manipulate someone's beliefs when they know they're watching a commercial. But with Facebook, a huge percentage of users don't know when they're interacting with an advertisement vs. organic content - this is the problem that I think needs solving.
> Zuck: "Instead, I believe the better approach is to work to increase transparency. Ads on Facebook are already more transparent than anywhere else."
In what way is Facebook transparent? Do they mean they simply disclose political ad spend? Or do they legitimately think they're doing a good job at properly labeling paid-for content?
Yes. It has a "Paid for by ____" header in addition to the sponsored designation
The reason it’s different with Facebook (even though it’s been going on in Magazines forever) is the scale of it. Magazines are ubiquitous but the average American does not spend 1-3 hours per day on reading magazines (minutes at most). But Facebook... it’s at a whole other level in terms of the magnitude of people reached and the magnitude of attention being captured.
What might not matter in Magazines May very well matter for Facebook based on the scale of the impact.
That is not true, product placement can be very subtle and even when it's not, it's not like the actors look at the camera and say "This show brought to you by X" even when it really is.
But there is more revenue than just that. FB allows advertisers to reach specific audiences, and even create lookalikes, so overall, there will be a %age of the users seeing more ads than me, potentially personalized for them, and average revenue per user would be higher.
[1] https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2019/q3...
Also, the numbers you posted include all the inventory - facebook news feed, ads on the side right on desktop, instagram, messenger ads, stories ads, instant articles, and even the ad network. According to facebook (read somewhere) 70% of their ads are on the ad network.
This is why you can’t pay to get a version of The NY Times that has no ads.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/02/facebooks-revenue-topped-5-p...
This is a classic isolated demand for rigor. “Sponsored” is exactly as prominent on Facebook as “op-ed” is on newspapers and “advertisement” is on whole sponsored segments of magazines. In all cases that word is there at the top in a normal font. What else are they supposed to do, make it flashing and rainbow colored? Why not complain about newspapers not doing that?
We often get sponsored articles that are labeled specifically as ads and are created to look exactly like any other article in our magazines. Most of the time they are extremely clear to the reader based simply on the content compared to other articles, but they are also marked directly as advertisements on the page... though not in a super obvious way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertorial
For those that haven't seen it, here's some backstory on one piece about the Trinidad election: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/t...
But basically, a political campaign was started around NOT voting as a form of protest. And those were targeted to the opposing party etc..
It is one thing if political ads were just about informing the public about a candidate, but we are far past that. This is a question about the legitimacy of our democracy now.
Anybody have any bright ideas on how to apply pressure on Facebook to do the same as Twitter? This feels to me like one of the more important questions of our (immediate) time since it effects absolutely everything.
> Nix moved on to pitch his next case study – a youth mobilisation campaign. Again, all is not as it seems. “Trinidad is a very interesting case history of how we look at problems,” Nix said. “Trinidad's tiny – it's 1.3 million people – but almost exactly half the country are Indian and half the country are Black, Afro-Caribbean. And there are two main political parties, one for the Blacks and one for the Indians… when the Indians are in power the Blacks don't get anything, and vice-versa, you know – they screw each other. So we were working, I think for the third time in Trinidad, and we were working for the Indians, and we did a huge amount for research, and two really important things came out.
> “One was that all the youth, Indian and Afro-Caribbean, felt disenfranchised … And secondly, amongst the Indians the familial hierarchies were really strong. There was huge respect for their elders and their parents and their families, but not so for the Afro-Caribbeans. And that was enough information to inform the entire campaign.
> “We went to the client and said, we only want to do one thing, we want to run a campaign where we target the youth – all youth, all the Blacks and all the Indians – and we try and increase apathy. And they didn't really understand why… but they allowed us to do this campaign, and the campaign had to be non-political, because no one, the kids don’t care about politics. It had to be reactive, because they’re lazy; inclusive of all ethnicities; bottom-up. It had to be exciting, because kids want to do something fun.
> “We came up with this campaign which was all about ‘Be part of the gang, do something cool, be part of a movement.’ And it was called the ‘Do So’ campaign… A3 posters. And graffiti, yellow paint, you know, we cut stencils with the jigsaw… And we'd give these to kids, and they'd get in their cars at night, you know, just make a drawing, get in the car, and race around the country putting up these posters and getting chased by the police and all their friends were doing it, and it was fucking brilliant fun…
> “Do So. Don't vote. Don't be involved in politics. It's like a sign of resistance against – not government, against politics. And voting. And very soon they're making their own YouTube videos. This is the prime minister’s house that's being graffitied! … It was carnage.
> “And the reason why this was such a good strategy is because we knew, and we really really knew, that when it came to voting, all the Afro-Caribbean kids wouldn't vote, because they ‘Do So’. But all the Indian kids would do what their parents told them to do, which is go out and vote. And so all the Indians went out and voted, and the difference on the 18-35-year-old turnout is like 40%, and that swung the election by about 6% – which is all we needed!”
The same caveats went for all the "psychological targeting" they bragged about a few years ago; there is precious little evidence that it is better than targeting roughly by political party, which we've had for decades. For its power, we only have their word to go on.
Yes, this was primarily a physical campaign, but it drives home the point of how these people work. And how they DID work in 2016 as well with respect to targeted advertising on Facebook.
Watch the movie if you haven't, this stuff was well researched by various reporters. It isn't perfect but it certainly shows that what we have now is not tenable if we want to maintain a democracy.
Another tool in the arsenal of the rich and powerful to give them more of a voice than the average person, is another way to look at it.
Facebook are profiting from both sides. They’re a news site that’s simultaneously FOX News and MSNBC all at once. But I still have to agree with Zuckerberg on this: enforcing misinformation shouldn’t be left to a private company.
Facebook has already said they have no problem enforcing this for non-politicians, after all.
I doubt few of the FB users I know wouldn't part with $3 in exchange for their network/contacts that FB provides.
Average revenue per user in the US/Canada is $26.76 [0] per user per year. Globally, the average is over $6.
I'd wager a bet that the ARPU for users willing to pay $30/yr for no ads is even greater than $27 - likely above $100 - because the only people who would pay extra to remove ads are people with disposable income (which are usually the exact people advertisers want to target when trying to sell stuff).
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/31/facebook-earnings-q4-2017-ar...
You may balk at Apple’s high prices but at least you’ve chosen not to pay.
Also, maybe the costs of running facebook's infrastructure and code drop (and employee headcount, etc) off dramatically if they take an axe to all the parts of it that are devoted to advertising and user data tracking/sales and just focus on the useful core tech bits, which also helps increase the profit margin on the new income model. It's possible there's a rational price that the masses would pay that would still turn them a profit under this kind of setup.
If they charged $3 per month they would be making less money than they are now, even if nobody quit because it's no longer free.
The rich and powerful already have exponentially more of a voice than the average person -- media corporations are privately owned, after all, and no one is suggesting that we prevent them from making political statements. Banning political advertising is basically saying that people or groups with thousands or millions of dollars to spend shouldn't be able to get their message out -- only billionaires should be able to do that.
In official capacity (under oath) it's illegal for us to lie to them. In their official capacity (under oath of office) they get to lie all day long, straight through their teeth. CEOs can't defraud their shareholders, but politicians can do so every day of their lives.
To me, the problem is these kinds of sponsored posts undermine that by not enforcing the attribution, by being more ephemeral than TV or print ads, and by allowing specific enough targeting to exclude anyone who might call it out.
Why did we think this was a good idea again? Ask China their opinion on the value of being the one to decide what is true.
Even if we go with consensus, it's such a difficult problem to solve in this age of internet where new content is created at such a rapid pace.
They need to stop braying about turning into China and admit that this a new ball game. That needs new rules.
This is the kinda thing corps get fined billions of dollars for.
They won't be any kind of "arbiter of truth" if they just decide to refuse to carry all political ads, like Twitter has decided to do.
I think that it's quite possible that a total laissez faire attitude towards quantity of paid speech may be incompatible with democracy, in the context of disinformation campaigns and massive wealth inequality, etc. Free speech without democracy is pointless. These issues may require some adjustment to our social contracts.
However, political ads aren’t usually just any kind of ad; They are almost always using scare tactics, or sometimes, just flat out lying. Stuff that would be illegal for a regular ad to do can sometimes be done simply because it’s a political ad.
Besides, who’s going to enforce the accuracy of the ads? We’ve seen many times that the government cannot hold itself accountable, so why would they do it for political ads.
I clearly said no such thing. I merely pointed out that 1) Facebook can respond to these problems without doing any (private) viewpoint censorship and 2) we as a society may need to adjust the parameters around paid speech to protect democracy. Most things aren't black and white, and the choice isn't a binary one between extremes like laissez faire and total bans.
1) people notice someone has gotten power
2) people notice the person is being shitty about it
3) people insist that responsibility and power go hand in hand
4) person does not rise to the challenge
5) people take the power away
Making them accountable is the warning shot. Next step is divestiture.
The question is will they percolate to the top of the priority list? Small time offenders often get away with it.
[edit:] if you ask me, which you kinda did, I think we're using a self-organizing system, where people self-select into active positions in society and then we cull the worst actors - if we can - before they get too powerful. We get enough pleasant surprises out of this arrangement that we tolerate the bad ones. Trying to plan this stuff out ahead of time? You get a boring dystopia or a scary dystopia.
Regulating and/or breaking up Facebook is hardly "demanding they become the final arbiter of truth." The goal here is reducing Mark Zuckerberg to the point where his personal judgement is irrelevant.
That's not even remotely the same.
[0]: https://www.freedomforuminstitute.org/first-amendment-center...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_speech
It doesn't matter what the outcome is of the 2020 election season, or what Facebook does during it. They will be blamed for it.
Buying Instagram and Whatsapp was farsighted, Facebook the company can cruise for awhile on those properties. The main site is bound to fall out of fashion, and soon.
Can't be soon enough for my taste.
To be honest I think it's pretty terrible as a group platform. No proper discussion threads and it's hard to find stuff. But people don't have to pay to host a website/forum and there's virtually no barrier to join since most people have an account on facebook.com.
The only reason I still use facebook is for these groups.
2) You make the assumption that the school does not have a private / protected group that is used for verifying group members and protecting content from non-members.
As you said the irony is that it is worse in almost every way except sign up friction. The content isn't even being spidered in any way by Google or the like so discovering the content in these groups later is also nigh impossible.
Just a travesty.
This is huge too. It's so hard to archive the data on these closed platforms - especially if you need an account ot view the data. There's a massive loss of knowledge when these platforms inevitably shutter.
Uhhh, that already happened many years ago. Talk to anyone under 30, and Facebook is VERY out of style/out-of-date. They will most likely laugh at you or think you're being ironic if you were to bring up "hanging out on Facebook" or anything like that.
As of July 2019, 13 - 24 year olds make up 31.9% of Facebook's overall userbase. Another 32% make up the 25-34 age range.
Compare that to some of the other platform's 13-24 demographic:
Twitter 39%, Instagram 37.3%, Snap Chat 58.5%
While Snapchat has a slightly younger audience, they also only have 210 million active users, a 13% increase from previous year. Facebook on the other hand has 2.45 billion active users, a 9% increase from previous year.
And at that, there are still many people in the US who mainly use Facebook, especially Gen X and older, so I always question if there are as many people on this train as it often seems like.
As for "Gen X and older", when your youngest customers are pushing 40, that's the kiss of death.
I agree with all sibling comments that claim that Facebook is already out of fashion; I'm suggesting that this will get worse, rapidly.
Suggesting? Ok, hoping.
Sadly this isn't true at all. They've been posting record profits and growth all year. Just yesterday they posted their third quarter results, where their sales rose 29% and user base increased by 35 million, including by 3 million in North America [0], despite negative news surrounding them all year. Most people simply don't care, or care enough to actually delete their accounts over these things.
[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-30/facebook-...
Zuck's a smart guy, and there are other smart people working there; I'm sure they realize this, but they can't actually say it to the AOCs of the world for fear of freaking out shareholders and advertisers.
Mark Zuckerburg saw it and thought, we now have a monopoly on social media based political advertising! $$$
Sounds a little dystopian and authoritarian to me as well. Fair democracy is hard.
Another option which would avoid some of the problems is to limit how tightly a political ad could be targeted. If misinformation is included in an ad, everyone should be able to see it and make a judgement. Targeting the most vulnerable people would not be an option.
I think if a platform doesn't know whether an ad is true or not - any kind of ad - they should be very hesitant to run the ad. I think Twitter's decision to just not run political ads makes sense because it's hard for a private company to make policies in public. Even if they are really careful, there will always be some suspicion that they are favoring the highest bidder or Jack's favorite.
I strongly agree that adding more information to the system (like making ads metadata open) is good for the society as a whole and might lead to better decisions, as in decisions supported by better data.
I don’t agree with the regulator idea, though. How do we make this regulator strong enough to resist corruption? It’s a tough job.
That's not true for Facebook or any other advertising platform. These platforms have entire sets of policies on what ads they will or will not run. Some restrictions are legally mandated, while others are based their own internal standards (i.e. they won't run blatantly racist ads even though they aren't technically illegal).
The decision to run political ads regardless of whether they contain lies is a specific choice they are making, not something that emerges from a universal principle of access to paid advertising.
And it's Mr. Zuckerberg's right to choose that route, as CEO of his company. But it doesn't absolve him of criticism for making the decision the way he did, whether from Mr. Dorsey, or a random nobody on this forum.
This rule means I could go form a PAC and post a ridiculous ad like “Voting for Biden will give you AIDS.” That has no basis in reality, yet from Zuckerberg’s words, it sounds like they would allow it.
Every political movement in history has consisted of forming groups, contacting potential allies, soliciting donations from them, then spending that money on pamphlets, TV, radio ads, etc. That's freedom at work. The medium has now shifted away from pamphlets, TV, and radio, towards the Internet and social media.
If paid advertisements are not free speech, then the concept of free speech would cease to exist beyond street corner rants.
I think the main reason they want sponsored content is, well, it pays their salaries and fuels the stock’s valuation.
translation: I simply cannot say no to the amount of money made from political ads
So if Facebook cared more about free speech than increasing profits, they'd go back to the older model where someone with no money, but plenty of time to volunteer, could build a sizeable audience.
It's not bad to want a good return on your investment, but to couch that in a feel-good pitch for free speech just seems wrong.
But then you could also be running ads to push a public issue such as climate change independent of anyone's campaign.
How do you differentiate between the two?
So you can ban advertisements from political organizations, but if a third-party or the Russians start running misinformation ads on climate change and pro-life, the media won't exactly recognize it as a "non political advertisement" and leave off.
In the election of 2016, most of the misinformation was not directly initiated by the political candidates. Your suggestion wouldn't affect any of the misinformation spread in 2016.
Canada, Ireland, and the UK all do this with Party Political Broadcasts:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_political_broadcast
I'm all for the actions of twitter in this case but it really should be mandated by law.
Should Adult (xxx) sites be held accountable for ads for male enlargement pills/snake oils? I personally don't think so. Is the answer to this problem to teach our population that blindly accepting what you read is safe (you can trust information posted on social media/public internet sites as fact) OR do we instead teach our citizens to filter information analytically and do research the way you are taught to in university for example?
Personally I think the former option is an intractable problem. Why try to make it safe for your population NOT to have to think instead of just teaching them how to think critically?
Hmmm...a question like that is essentially opening up the gates for speculation - the kind of speculation that may not paint the government (the body that seems to be pushing for, as you say, "trustworthy information") in the most benevolent light.
I agree with the essence of what you're getting at - it's the old biblical trope of giving a man a fish vs. teaching a man to fish. But I could think of many possible benefits (for a government) in having a population with a reduced ability or incentive to be analytical and think critically. To be fair, I can think of many possible costs as well - I don't know whether one would outweigh the other.
Well, Mr. Zuckerberg; I don't think this explains, let alone justifies your policy of allowing outright lies in political ads without any pushback.
Whenever you think this company cannot sink any lower you're always in for a massive surprise and disappointment.
I define full transparency as providing a full, near-real-time, public record of EVERY advert run, including (but not limited to): who paid for it & in what currency, all targeting parameters, and count of views.
This would allow any person, public interest group, competitor, or other interested party to be informed and respond as they saw appropriate.
This would also make FB adverts more like major media adverts, where anyone can (with a little bit of work) see exactly who is running what for & against their position.
As FB is currently opaque, it is a magnet for manipulators seeking the holy grail of adverts, micro-targeted at the exact people who will respond, highly effective at changing behavior, and completely unnoticed by the opposition. FB may see this as attracting revenue, but the transparent option described above will likely generate more with the likely cycles of responses to adverts, counter-responses, etc.
False claims, wholly misleading edits? Fine, just as long as everyone can see who's spreading that crap, and to whom, and can respond.
I have no idea if Facebook already does any of this, but from their policy about fact checking, they do not require any political ads to go through their third party fact-check. Otherwise the third-party fact checker appears to do all the research themselves or they may reach out to the advertisers for more information.
https://www.facebook.com/help/publisher/182222309230722?ref=...
1 - If you take away FB advertising, then you reduce political upward mobility of many lesser known candidates.
2 - FOX, CNN, MSNBC and others will have an unfair advantage to promote an insider candidate or a candidate the bosses at these networks want to help promote.
If you're okay with the above outcome, then push to end FB advertising. I can tell you from the inside, FB is tremendously important in giving smaller and lesser candidates a fighting chance against those backed by big money, establishment and insiders.
I'm even curious if AOC herself would have been able to prevail without FB advertising.
Even something small as promoting an event like a town hall, greatly benefits the smaller candidates, IMO.
As for twitter advertising, it wasn't helpful for us and it only constitutes a small fraction of "digital". If you look at the campaign spending data across you'll see a similar trend. So it's an easier decision for twitter.
It feels like a false dichotomy, especially when freedom of speech is invoked.
We don't talk about freedom of speech for drug companies when we require a side effects disclaimer at the end of a pharmacutical ad - it feels disingenuous to me to talk about it here too when we should be talking about enforcing the FEC's attribution guidelines.
The government elite, of course, see through these shenanigans and are just out to protect people from voting wrongly.
I wouldn't be surprised if Facebook has already done this.
• Require all advertisements to be published N days in advance on a public noticeboard with full details of every aspect of the advertisement—audience, budget, funding entity.
• Do not allow targeting in any political advertising other than to narrow adverts to the geography of the candidate or issue—e.g. ads for a congressperson to their congressional district.
• Require the business unit handling political advertising to have strict isolation from the rest of the company. Maybe require it to be an independent entity.
If we seriously need to fix this then it should be enforced by a law which applies to every media/news organization.
Luckily Twitter didn't follow the reasoning that as long as it's not illegal, it's OK.
Fundraising becomes slightly less important if you can't spend the money online. Not sure of the overall effect, as TV providers are unlikely to turn away the lucrative ad spend.
I'd like to have an ISO9001 traceable, encrypted log of all the ads shown to me. Every pixel that was placed on a screen meant to change my mind. And it should be traceable all the way back to the mine the ore was dug from.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_(book)
Source: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/21810-it-is-difficult-to-ge...
As long as there is such informational overload, there is no escaping from having algorithms sort things for you
Blurting out, “so you’re a whore then” in a staff meeting? Not okay. So I just stared.
If I could stand to look at Zuck I’d be staring right now.
Their response: I'm glad to hear we're <doing it for money> and not <giving it away for free>.
(Using words beginning with 'W' and 'S' respectively for each concept.)
I was referred for a CtH position at a small company years ago where they turned out to be, to quote the old CIA line, looking for a certain moral flexibility. I declined to convert, and I also don't accept referrals from that person anymore.
I was not at all surprised to see a couple of those people end up at an online gambling company in my neighborhood a few years later. And relieved they didn't seem to recognize me.
I keep hearing there are people who went into CS entirely for the money. I have deluded myself that I hadn't met many of them. But you encounter a bunch of them in one place and it's pretty hard to ignore.
But the thing is that the whole premise of free speech is the belief that sunlight is best disinfectant for bad ideas. We have this belief (whether warranted or not, though I'd argue it is) that _utlimately_ we will arrive at the good ideas and reject the bad ideas through public discourse. In other words, we have faith, from a holistic standpoint, that the polity will decide issues based on the substance of the ideas presented to them in the political arena (I understand well that this isn't the case in specific instances nor in every period of time, but it's still the belief broadly speaking). That being the case, increased reach - where reach simply = number of eyeballs you shove your message in front of - doesn't mean anything per se. The people who participate in the democratic process and public discourse still must sift through the ideas to determine which are good and which are bad.
Maybe the counterargument to my point is "well, yes, we do believe that ideas are ultimately what win out, but if the candidates with less money cannot reach an audience, then you never get to a debate in the first place."
I guess I do hear that argument and I'm unsure.
I think where this gets complicated is when you start to think not just in terms of hard cash and spending on political ads. What about when media outlets and other organizations are dedicated, for whatever reason, to a certain candidate. For example, when TYT clearly favors a candidate and spends an entire election season praising them, etc - should that be allowed? In some ways those are resources being used as well to increase the reach of a candidate. It's time, money, staff, resources, etc. It seems to me that it just gets very dicey when you look at things just in terms of cash. You end up having to effectively try to centralize the whole process and make sure that everyone's reach is exactly even, which just isn't possible without massive government intervention and coercion and flagrant violations of free speech. I just don't see how this works out well in the end.
I strongly recommend Jill Gordon's paper "John Stuart Mill and the 'Marketplace of Ideas'" (1997), which explores Mill's views and the history of their use, in depth:
https://www.pdcnet.org/soctheorpract/content/soctheorpract_1...
(Paywalled, though available via Sci-Hub / Library Genesis.)
https://philpapers.org/rec/GORJSM
Now, apparently, many are convinced it is wrong to have any barriers to lying.
The con men have certainly gotten the upper hand. I suppose if we fall for this obvious and absurd BS we deserve the world we get (collectively).
I don't know why we expect any company to self regulate when an action hurts its interests.
Since FB tends to be a self-reinforcing echo chamber on both ends of the political spectrum, political ads will keep users engaged with the platform. For a variety of reasons interest in the 2020 campaign is likely to be sky high so allowing the ads should keeps FB's DAU's & MAU's in the preferred direction. Not allowing the ads could in-turn adversely affect those metrics and subsequently pull down ALL of their advertising rates. Freedom of Speech rational of allowing adds? (scoff, scoff, snort, outburst of laughter.....)
Slight tangent: Regulation is a thing because businesses have been shown to not self regulate when its in their best interest not to. A corporation maximizing profits could be a good thing for consumers, but it could also be bad. And when it’s bad, that’s when regulation is supposed to come in.
> This week, another critic emerged: Adriel Hampton, a marketer and progressive activist in San Francisco, who on Monday announced his intention to run for governor of California in protest of the policy, posting fake ads to prove his point.
> Facebook has since said that it won’t allow Mr. Hampton to take advantage of its lax approach to political speech despite his candidacy, and he says he is exploring his legal options.
The rules are enforced if and when they want to, completely arbitrarily.
If money is speech, only the rich are heard!
You don't dig in your heels because that attracts the media attention, like a shark to a drop of blood. You say "This is something we're going to look at and evaluate closely." And then wait until the news gets bored of it. And then quietly release that you won't because of several reasons.
This is even more the case for narrowly targeted, and particularly negative / dissuading advertising. A chief tool and complaint in recent years has been of suppressing voter turnout, at times through issue advertising, but also specifically by spreading disinformation about candidates, voting processes, locations, times, and requirements.
Simply disabling advertising for a narrow range of users capable and motivated to block ads does not protect against the social consequences of such activities.
That's from someone who's not a free-speech absolutist.
The inciting incident that gave rise to the concerns is simply that Trump won. Only a tiny fraction of the reach that Trump obtained via FB and Twitter was paid advertising.
Most of the reach that benefitted Trump was simply the algorithm amplifying journalistic stories (mostly negative) that allowed Trump to dog whistle effectively.
Imagine someone with 800 FB friends who shares an article from, the NYT or Huffpost that is harshly critical of Trump for saying something that comes across as racist. There are three broad categories to characterize those who see the shared content:
a) people who are in the target audience of the article, who dislike Trump, who expected him to be racist, and who consider the article further proof (and vindication) of their view
b) people who read the coverage and find it unfair to Trump, even if they agree with the gist.
c) people who actually agree with the racist view Trump is alleged to have expressed.
If the user sharing the article has 800 friends, most are probably in group a, but Trump benefits from any friends the user has who are in groups b or c. To them, the article reinforces their support for Trump or their view that the coverage was unfair.
For those who view the coverage as unfair, a steady stream of similarly unfair-seeming articles makes them effectively immune to negative press about Trump. In 2019 many of Trump's supporters are in this group. When Trump describes "fake news" he is appealing to this group. The reach that benefits Trump may be 100 of the 800 friends, and it cost Trump's campaign nothing. Trump triggered these kinds of signaling cascades many, many times during the 2016 campaign.
Sadly, the biggest problem is reporting that is not journalism but in-group focused entertainment writing. Many of the "most shared" articles from major papers are not thorough, in-depth stories, they are light on journalism and heavy on in-group signaling. It is this kind of article that helps Trump the most, for the aforementioned reasons.
These are also the kinds of articles that get the most clicks and generate the most revenue for the paper.
-- Bob Dylan
See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21413532
Zuck lies, and he likes earning revenue off liars as well.
I’ve always felt nervous about the role of money in politics and removing the requirement for massive ad-spend budgets might bring us closer to a more moral democracy, and away from pay-to-play.
Easy at least when the message is “don’t vote for Bob!”, than when it is “we don’t see any harm in GMO wheat”. Unattributed attack ads are pretty obvious but it’s harder to tie issue ads to the party they benefit.